Like I said, I'm more worried long term about the environmental issues then the use of arms.

You never get quite down to the bottom of the barrel, but we are much higher than that at the present time. There is quite a lot left in the barrel that could be explained by them. If they have some weapons, if they have some anthrax, they should deliver that.

The Iraqis are not threatened by the Turks or by the Iranians or by the Saudis and they tell me that these are not weapons of mass destruction, they are weapons of self-destruction.

The inspections started in 1991, right after the Gulf War. One of the conditions for the ceasefire was that Iraq had to do away with all of its weapons of mass destruction - biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.

It was to do with information management. The intention was to dramatise it.

What surprises me, what amazes me, is that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons.

I don't think that anyone seriously fears that the world can be blown to pieces all together. But what one can fear and rightly so are regional things, like in the Middle East, India, Pakistan, the Korean Peninsula, borders in Africa, etc.

But I would say if the Security Council is only relevant if it agrees with the United States, then we have come a long way in a direction that I do not like very much.

The South Africans decided that they would like to prove to the world they did not have any nuclear weapons and their decision was not doubted because it was the end of the Cold War, it was also the end of apartheid.

Even on television, the wavelengths that you use, they have to be distributed between countries.

International cooperation, multilateralism is indispensable.

The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.

So interviews are a valuable tool, but under certain circumstances they'd be more valuable than others.

On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way.

I also hear your president say that war is the means of last resort and I think he means that. I met him last autumn and he assured me that they wanted to come through and disarm Iraq by peaceful means, and that's what we are trying to do as hard as we can.

The country is not a democratic state. Therefore we fear that they might carry a recorder in their pocket or there may be bugs in the walls, and you cannot be absolutely sure that you get a straight testimony.

I can imagine that the Iraqis undertake the destruction out of fear. If they had denied it, if they had said no, that certainly would have played into the hands of those that would like to take armed action immediately. I have no illusions in that regard.

If public opinion still endorses military action that's one thing, but if they wait maybe it will not. So it's not only impatience, but there are several other factors.

They have been saying for a long time that Iraq made an effort to import active uranium, and my colleague demonstrated the other day that they came to the conclusion that it was a fake document that everybody is relying upon.

I think that we have to do our job well, investigate thoroughly and then describe very honestly what we see to the Security Council. And some of the things might please people there and other things may not please the people.

Like I said, I'm more worried long term about the environmental issues then the use of arms.

Look at the Palestinians with the huge, huge percentage of unemployed. What does that breed? Anyone who's unemployed in the world, you feel there's no meaning and there's a risk that you drift over to something desperate. Yes, we have to tackle the social problems as well.

Now the idea about taking people abroad is that if they come over to Cyprus, which we have in mind, and bring their families and would have the possibility to defect after they would be ready to speak their mind, well I hope so.

If you take the biological weapons in the United States we still will have perhaps a single individual who was able to make anthrax, dry it, and spread it through the mail and cause terror.

The world has gotten so interwoven.

Iraq did not spontaneously opt for disarmament. They did it as part of a ceasefire, so they were forced to do it, otherwise the war might have gone on. So the motivation has been very different.

By and large my relations with the US were good.

I don't see this planet being... they're talking about how they're turning around the environmental problems here, but I think it's already too late.

There are nuclear weapons in China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan. It wouldn't take much to send a couple of warheads off on this planet somewhere that would cause a lot of environmental damage, then if you have got someone who wants to retaliate you have real problems.

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.

There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table.

I wanted to help raise awareness, so I created an environmental foundation called Just Within Reach.

Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment.

The position I took at the time was that we hadn't really examined any of the potential environmental consequences of introducing genetically modified organisms.

But my point is that you design something in the end that precludes any unhealthy trading practices that are not going to serve your environmental or your economic objectives but now is not the time to do it.

Pushing production out of America to nations without our environmental standards increases global environmental risks.

This Bush administration has a growing credibility gap, maybe even a credibility chasm, on environmental policy. The President has lost the trust of the American people when it comes to the environment.

I assume we will have figured out a way to efficiently utilize solar energy and tied that to an efficient way to use nuclear energy in such a way that it doesn't pose a serious environmental issue.

Let me start by emphasizing that I am open to efforts to expedite environmental procedures for true emergencies or in other clear cases where current laws are needlessly burdensome.

One of the responsibilities faced by the Environmental Genome Project is to provide the science base upon which society can make better informed risk management decisions.

Complexity is one of the great problems in environmental design.

I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes.

There should be more attention paid to scientific research in the ecology area, and I think that such attention to proper environmental concerns would make the public feel much better about it.

The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.

And I know that the younger generation is doing things that are so ingenious. And for them it's not a matter of a political belief or an environmental stance. It's really just common sense.

Well, for starters, we have to do more to create demand for new technologies that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and environmental degradation.

Of the 55 refineries closed in America in the last 10 years, they were all closed for economic reasons, mostly oil company mergers. Not a single one was closed for environmental purposes or objections.

American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc.