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 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,
There are still a number of questions, including the question of possible further external assistance to the nuclear program. You don't know what you don't know.
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.
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.