The 1991 Gulf War never fully ended because no armistice formally ended it. As a result, relations between the United States, the United Nations, and Iraq remained strained, although Saddam Hussein issued formal statements renouncing his invasion of Kuwait and made reparations payments for Kuwait. The US and the United Nations maintained a policy of "containment" towards Iraq, which involved economic sanctions, Iraqi no-fly zones enforced by the United States, United Kingdom, and France (until ending its no-fly zone operations in 1998) and ongoing inspections of Iraqi weapons programs. In 2002, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441 demanding that Iraq "comply with its disarmament obligations" and allow weapons inspections. Iraq war critics such as former weapons inspector Scott Ritter claimed that these sanctions and weapons inspections policies, supported by both the Bush and Clinton administrations, were actually intended to foster regime change in Iraq.