Hans Blix Quotes (75 Quotes)


    what his game plan will look like.

    The patience that they require for themselves now was not anything that they wanted to give to us,

    What surprises me, what amazes me, is that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons.

    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.

    You never get quite down to the bottom of the barrel, but we are much higher than that at the present time. There is quite a lot left in the barrel that could be explained by them. If they have some weapons, if they have some anthrax, they should deliver that.


    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.

    On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way.

    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,

    The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.

    What has not worked is for the Iraqi side either to present prohibited items for destruction or present evidence that they are finished. We hope that at this late hour they will come and give a positive response. If they do not do that, then our report to the Security Council on Friday February 14 will not be what we'd like it to be.

    In the dossier for which I am responsible -- the biological and chemical weapons and missiles -- there are a great many questions that relate to whether Iraq still has any of those left -- many, many unanswered questions.

    In the Middle Ages when people were convinced there were witches they certainly found them. This is a bit risky,

    Now the idea about taking people abroad is that if they come over to Cyprus, which we have in mind, and bring their families and would have the possibility to defect after they would be ready to speak their mind, well I hope so.

    Iraq did not spontaneously opt for disarmament. They did it as part of a ceasefire, so they were forced to do it, otherwise the war might have gone on. So the motivation has been very different.

    I think it is clear that there has to be constant pressure to keep the Iraqis to comply with the resolution.

    If public opinion still endorses military action that's one thing, but if they wait maybe it will not. So it's not only impatience, but there are several other factors.

    And with 200,000 men there and 64 billion, I hope the coalition finds weapons, if there are any.

    I hope I have seen ... a beginning of taking these remaining disarmament issues more seriously,

    Like I said, I'm more worried long term about the environmental issues then the use of arms.

    It feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when you are actually on the same side,

    International cooperation, multilateralism is indispensable.

    Saddam Hussein has certainly figured himself to be a sort of emperor of Mesopotamia and the leader of the Arab world.

    We have not seen a serious effort on the Iraqi side ... or evidence that would clear up the question marks.

    If they have any -- and still, that's a big if -- I would doubt that they would use it because a lot of countries and people in the world are negative to the idea of waging war,

    If the Iraqis were to use any chemical weapons, then I think the public opinion around the world would immediately turn against Iraq, and they would say, as well, that the invasion was justified.

    My guess ... is that they would not because ... there are many people who were critical towards the war and felt that this was too sudden or that it was too brutal, and if Iraq did use any chemical weapons now, people would say, 'So, they were liars. They lied about this and there was a justification for the intervention,'

    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.

    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.

    It was to do with information management. The intention was to dramatise it.

    Look at the Palestinians with the huge, huge percentage of unemployed. What does that breed? Anyone who's unemployed in the world, you feel there's no meaning and there's a risk that you drift over to something desperate. Yes, we have to tackle the social problems as well.

    UNSCOM had a practice of not revealing names of companies of suppliers of equipment to Iraq because they often had the possibility of getting information from these companies, and the best way to get these companies to talk to them was not to publish their names to start with,

    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

    It editing the report was a very fast operation, of course. And we have a limited number of people and they worked very, very hard over the weekend, and I am pleased they were able to do so.

    But there is a chance that the U.S. will use bombs or missiles against several sites in Iran. Then, the reactions would be strong, and would contribute to increased terrorism.

    Even on television, the wavelengths that you use, they have to be distributed between countries.

    The world has gotten so interwoven.

    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.

    The Iraqis have been putting themselves in a position to rejuvenate their weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.

    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.

    We still have time on our side. Iran can't have a nuclear bomb until five years from now.

    I think that we have to do our job well, investigate thoroughly and then describe very honestly what we see to the Security Council. And some of the things might please people there and other things may not please the people.

    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.

    By and large my relations with the US were good.

    I don't think that anyone seriously fears that the world can be blown to pieces all together. But what one can fear and rightly so are regional things, like in the Middle East, India, Pakistan, the Korean Peninsula, borders in Africa, etc.

    The commission has not at any time during the inspections in Iraq found evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction ... whether from pre-1991 or later.

    We will want to see a lot more (cooperation) this weekend.

    Our inspectors had been there, and they had taken a lot of samples, and there was no trace of any chemicals or biological things, ... And the trucks that we had seen were water trucks.

    We want to be serious when we come forward with accusations, as we were when ordering the Iraqis to destroy a very large missile program.

    It seems to me that they could do things which would change the situation, ... The principal issue is weapons of mass destruction.

    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.


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