Gordon Carrera

No, he hasn't got his coup.

Or he thinks maybe Saddam will just give up all his weapons and therefore we might not need a war.

Because Saddam will just decide to disarm, which of course, as we know, he can't do because he hasn't got them.

And then Blair is thinking, well, the other option is the UN is going to find stuff, and that will help me justify the war that's coming, or he's going to block the inspectors, and that will help me justify the war, and it's not happening.

And the inspectors are saying, well, we need a few more months to come to the answers.

Blix and Washington are starting to clash.

I mean, Blix thinks, and I think rightly, that Washington is bugging him.

So he starts meeting his team in a restaurant because he doesn't want to be spied on by Washington.

And Cheney himself, I think, and Cheney's team are saying, if you don't find stuff, if you're not aggressive enough to Blix and ElBaradei, we will discredit you.

So I think there's a kind of growing tension here over why nothing's been found.

But Blix also believes there are weapons, doesn't he?

Yeah, he does at the time.

And I think it's one of the interesting points is that I think he probably he thought there was probably something there.

He's also a bit confused as to why they haven't found stuff.

But they think, well, we need months.

We need time.

And this is the problem, because Blair wants more time.

The inspectors want more time.

Washington, the military timetable is now dictating events and they do not want more time.

So Blair goes to Washington on January 31st to make the case to Bush at a kind of face-to-face meeting to let this UN process play out, maybe six months.