The journalist Andrew Cockburn reported in The First Post that Ekéus told him how the former US President Bill Clinton attempted to prevent Saddam Hussein's Iraq from being certified as free of weapons of mass destruction.

Despite Ekéus' belief that Iraq was nearly certifiable as being free of such weapons, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced that United Nations sanctions would not be lifted until such time as Hussein was no longer in power.

According to the journalist Christopher Hitchens, Ekéus "told me that he'd been offered by Tariq Aziz in person, to his face, a bribe of a million and a half dollars to change his inspection report.

[3] In January 2000, Ekéus was nominated to head the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission (UNMOVIC), charged with investigating allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

But Ekéus' name failed to receive the approval of the UN Security Council, due to the opposition of France, Russia and China, and so Hans Blix was appointed instead.