SYDNEY, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- Hans Blix, the former head of the Iraq weapons search, is the latest to say oil may be a factor in the war in Iraq.

"One fear I would have is that the U.S. has a hidden thought to remain in Iraq," Blix, the former chief of the U.N. inspection team looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, told Australia's ABC radio.

Blix was in Australia accepting the Sydney Peace Prize.

"One reason why they wanted in was that they felt they must leave Saudi Arabia. After the Gulf War in 1991, they left their troops in Saudi Arabia to protect pipelines," he said. "And when they felt they could no longer stay in Saudi Arabia, Iraq was the next best place because it was more secularized than Saudi Arabia and had the second biggest oil reserves in the region."

In September former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan caused a stir when he wrote in his new book about the Iraq oil-war connection.