“In a report released January 10, 2001, the outgoing U.S. secretary of defense, William S. Cohen, warned that Iraq had rebuilt at least its weapons infrastructure and might have begun covertly producing some chemical or biological agents. A spokesman at the British Foreign Office said they shared the U.S. suspicions (which were not new) regarding factories rebuilt after the allied bombings in [December] 1998, but that they had no hard proof or hard evidence to substantiate the charges. It was added that since the UN inspectors had left Iraq in December 1998, ‘the international community had no way of verifying such suspicions.’ ”
– Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq, Page 55