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
We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks,
We have not seen a serious effort on the Iraqi side ... or evidence that would clear up the question marks.
What we have said we need all the time is the presentation of more evidence -- that they have not been taking the questions seriously which were posed in the report with which they are familiar, and we would like to have responses to those questions,
The Iraqis are not threatened by the Turks or by the Iranians or by the Saudis and they tell me that these are not weapons of mass destruction, they are weapons of self-destruction.
If public opinion still endorses military action that's one thing, but if they wait maybe it will not. So it's not only impatience, but there are several other factors.
The country is not a democratic state. Therefore we fear that they might carry a recorder in their pocket or there may be bugs in the walls, and you cannot be absolutely sure that you get a straight testimony.
Now the idea about taking people abroad is that if they come over to Cyprus, which we have in mind, and bring their families and would have the possibility to defect after they would be ready to speak their mind, well I hope so.
I think that we have to do our job well, investigate thoroughly and then describe very honestly what we see to the Security Council. And some of the things might please people there and other things may not please the people.
Look at the Palestinians with the huge, huge percentage of unemployed. What does that breed? Anyone who's unemployed in the world, you feel there's no meaning and there's a risk that you drift over to something desperate. Yes, we have to tackle the social problems as well.
I can imagine that the Iraqis undertake the destruction out of fear. If they had denied it, if they had said no, that certainly would have played into the hands of those that would like to take armed action immediately. I have no illusions in that regard.
We want to be serious when we come forward with accusations, as we were when ordering the Iraqis to destroy a very large missile program.
It would be awkward if we were doing inspections and then a new mandate, with new, changed directives were to arise, ... It would be better have those earlier. My impression is that there is good intensity with talks about that, and we will abide by whatever the council decides.
The situation is tense at the moment, but there is a new opportunity and we are here to provide inspection which is credible.
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,