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 would like to have clues as to where the United States' and other countries' intelligence feel they know Iraqis are storing weapons of mass destruction, ... Then, we can send in the inspectors.
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?
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.
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,
It seems to me that they could do things which would change the situation, ... The principal issue is weapons of mass destruction.
The inspections started in 1991, right after the Gulf War. One of the conditions for the ceasefire was that Iraq had to do away with all of its weapons of mass destruction - biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
We would expect them to accept what we have said and to destroy the missiles as we have stated, ... They are to start the destruction by March 1 and we will discuss with them the pace and order.
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.
We will want to see a lot more (cooperation) this weekend.
to seek and present credible evidence for their absence.
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.
Many issues have been clarified, and we will continue tomorrow, ... By the end of tomorrow, when we are finished, I hope that we can say a little more than we have done today.
There are very many of these missiles and a lot of items that pertain to them, which we had enumerated in our letter. It is a very significant piece of real disarmament.
It feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when you are actually on the same side,