All of this contrasts sharply with the removal from office in April 2002 of Rogeli Pfirter's predecessor, José Bustani. Bustani, an experienced Brazilian diplomat, had been unanimously re-elected for a four-year term in 2000, only to be torpedoed by the White House and Downing Street. He had been negotiating with Baghdad for OPCW inspectors to have full access to Iraq's purported chemical weapons arsenal, and it looked as if he might succeed. This would not only have made a nonsense of Washington's raison d'être for the coming war, it would have exposed the lies both capitals were peddling. Therefore, Bustani was ousted.