STOCKHOLM - Hope of a peaceful solution to the crisis over Iraq is running out and war looks likely, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix told a Swedish newspaper late on Sunday. His comments, made after Sunday's U.S.-British-Spanish summit on Iraq, were published by tabloid Aftonbladet on Monday, the same day the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said the United States had advised it to pull staff out of Iraq, in the clearest sign yet of imminent war. Asked by the paper if he thought there would be war, Blix said: "Yes, just now it does not look like there is very much hope. But I do not have the right to give up, and neither do I want to do that. We will in any case continue and try (to work) until the last minute."
Asked how long the weapons inspectors would stay in Iraq, Blix said: "We will stay there as long as we dare. If we leave that is a sign that this is over, so that is why we don't want to leave before all hope has gone." President Bush said after Sunday's summit with Britain and Spain that the United Nations had only one more day to find a diplomatic end to the Iraq crisis before the United States moved to a war footing. The United States and its allies accuse Iraq of harboring banned weapons, a charge the Baghdad government denies.//