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
Saddam Hussein has certainly figured himself to be a sort of emperor of Mesopotamia and the leader of the Arab world.
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.
So interviews are a valuable tool, but under certain circumstances they'd be more valuable than others.
In the Middle Ages when people were convinced there were witches they certainly found them. This is a bit risky,
We will want to see a lot more (cooperation) this weekend.
We expect them to accept what we have said and destroy the missiles as we have stated, ... They have done so in past always when we have requested so.
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.
The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.
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,
perhaps the most important problem we are facing.
The things that have happened in the last few days are a bit troubling.
Sorry, but in the chemical sector we can't go that far.
We had hoped that it would clarify a lot of issues that remained open since 1998. It did give information about peaceful programs concerning biology and chemistry, but it did not really shed any new evidence from the chemical weapons and biological weapons program.