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
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.
It's true the Iraqis misbehaved and had no credibility but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were in the wrong.
I also hear your president say that war is the means of last resort and I think he means that. I met him last autumn and he assured me that they wanted to come through and disarm Iraq by peaceful means, and that's what we are trying to do as hard as we can.
Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance-not even today-of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace.
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.
Saddam Hussein has certainly figured himself to be a sort of emperor of Mesopotamia and the leader of the Arab world.