UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said he will leave his job at the end of June, with disappointment that his teams weren’t given a few more months to try to disarm Iraq peacefully and avert war.

Blix extended his contract for four months at the end of February, when inspectors were trying to get Iraq to provide substantive answers to outstanding disarmament issues and the United States was warning that Saddam Hussein’s time to co-operate with the inspectors was running out.

He said that on June 1 he will submit a quarterly report to the Security Council on the work of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and leave at the end of the month, a few days after his 75th birthday.

“I look forward to going back to research, to writing about international law and, not least, to be with my family, my wife,” the former Swedish foreign minister said in an interview with Associated Press Television News Friday. “Summer is nice at home, and I think after the hectic life here it would be a nice time to come home.”

If he was asked to stay on, would he say no?

“I would have wanted to leave last year. However, the way things looked then we were into dialogue (with the Iraqis) and I didn’t think I could do that,” Blix said. “But as things look now, certainly I will be very happy to go home in June.”

Blix took the helm of the commission, known as UNMOVIC, in March 2000, three months after it was established by the Security Council to replace the first weapons inspection agency for Iraq, the UN Special Commission.

His inspectors returned to Iraq for the first time in four years in late November, soon after the UN Security Council strengthened inspections and gave Baghdad a final opportunity to disarm peacefully.

Blix said he is certain President George W Bush “hoped that this path to disarmament would be successful” although many people in his administration were sceptical about inspections.

But sometime perhaps in late January or early February, he said, the US government “gave up on inspections” and stepped up military preparations.

Blix said he regrets that he didn’t press the Iraqis earlier to do more to show they were actively co-operating on substantive issues, which they started to demonstrate toward the end of January and in February.

The chief inspector never asked for more time for inspections — but he said repeatedly he would welcome it.

The United States decided, however, to push for a resolution giving Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to disarm or face war.

In the face of strong opposition from France, Russia, Germany and China who wanted inspections to continue, the United States and allies Britain and Spain dropped the resolution on March 17. The war began two days later.

“I think we were given a bit too short a time,” he said. “A few more months would have been useful.”

“There is a bit to regret, and a big disappointment, but this is life, and life goes on and the Security Council is not going to disappear from the surface of the earth even if some people would like to see that happen,” Blix said.