Hans Blix
Hans Blix
Hans Martin Blix; born 28 June 1928) is a Swedish diplomat and politician for the Liberal People's Party. He was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairsand later became the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. As such, Blix was the first Western representative to inspect the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union on site, and led the agency response to them. Blix was also the head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission from March...
NationalitySwedish
ProfessionDiplomat
Date of Birth28 June 1928
CountrySweden
Now we are curious, we are the most curious of all to know, are the Americans and Brits and others going to find some weapons of mass destruction?
This does not necessarily mean that such items could not exist. They might. There remain a long list of items unaccounted for, ... But it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it was unaccounted for.
I told the council that we hope we will have been through the main part of the document -- which is about 3,000 pages -- by Friday.
The destruction of missiles requested has not yet begun. Iraq could have made full use of the declaration which was submitted on 7 December. It is hard to understand why a number of the measures which are now being taken, could not have been initiated earlier. If they had been taken earlier, they might have borne fruit by now.
Inspection is not a game of catch as catch can. Regrettably, the 12,000-page declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does not seem to contain any new evidence that will eliminate the questions.
But there is some evidence that has been placed on the table that has been put into doubt, like evidence about the aluminum tubes. So the more on the table, the better.
The Iraqis have been putting themselves in a position to rejuvenate their weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.
Our inspectors had been there, and they had taken a lot of samples, and there was no trace of any chemicals or biological things, ... And the trucks that we had seen were water trucks.
It feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when you are actually on the same side,
I don't think there would have been any inspection but for outside pressure, including U.S. forces,
It would be inappropriate for me to assume they still have weapons of mass destruction, but at the same time, it would be naive to exclude that possibility,
I think the more evidence that is placed on the table, if there is some, the better,
Denying us access would then be like smoke. It's not finding a smoking gun, but finding the smoke. And that would be a very serious matter. If they deny us access we'll report it to the Security Council,
Our role is not to humiliate the Iraqis.