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
I hope I have seen ... a beginning of taking these remaining disarmament issues more seriously,
In the Middle Ages when people were convinced there were witches they certainly found them. This is a bit risky,
If there are any obstructions or problems, we will report them,
Exactly what it contains, I cannot tell you. But they have followed up on their promise that it would come,
In the course of these inspections, we have not found any smoking gun.
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.
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,
they know very well what they should provide. We have not seen it yet.
It seems to me that they could do things which would change the situation, ... The principal issue is weapons of mass destruction.
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.
They sort of showered us with letters trying to explain this or that.
They said they had been surprised themselves ... They were in boxes, never opened -- there were bird droppings on them. But of course they should have been declared and destroyed.
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.
The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.