Hans Blix Quotes

• These reports do not contend that weapons of mass destruction remain in Iraq, but nor do they exclude that possibility. They point to lack of evidence and inconsistencies, which raise question marks, which must be straightened out, if weapons dossiers are to be closed and confidence is to arise.

  Hans Blix

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• 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.

  Hans Blix

  Topics in Uncategorized

• We have not found any smoking guns.

  Hans Blix

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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.

  Hans Blix

• 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.

  Hans Blix

• They have been saying for a long time that Iraq made an effort to import active uranium, and my colleague demonstrated the other day that they came to the conclusion that it was a fake document that everybody is relying upon.

  Hans Blix

• The world has gotten so interwoven.

  Hans Blix

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

  Hans Blix

• The South Africans decided that they would like to prove to the world they did not have any nuclear weapons and their decision was not doubted because it was the end of the Cold War, it was also the end of apartheid.

  Hans Blix

• 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.

  Hans Blix

• 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.

  Hans Blix

• The country is not a democratic state. Therefore we fear that they might carry a recorder in their pocket or there may be bugs in the walls, and you cannot be absolutely sure that you get a straight testimony.

  Hans Blix

• So interviews are a valuable tool, but under certain circumstances they’d be more valuable than others.

  Hans Blix

• 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.

  Hans Blix

• 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.

  Hans Blix

• 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.

  Hans Blix

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

  Hans Blix

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

  Hans Blix

• 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.

  Hans Blix

• International cooperation, multilateralism is indispensable.

  Hans Blix

Hans Blix (30)

Birth:	28th June, 1928
Nationality:	Swedish
Profession:	Diplomat, Politician, Professor

About

Hans Martin Blix was born in Uppsala, Sweden. He is a Swedish diplomat and politician for the Liberal People's Party. He was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1978–1979 and later became Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He was also Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission from 2000- 2003, when he was succeeded by Dimitris Perrikos. He studied at Uppsala University and Columbia University, earning his PhD from the University of Cambridge. In 1959, he earned a Juris Doctor in International Law at Stockholm University, where he was appointed Associate Professor in International Law the next year. He has written several books include: Disarming Iraq, The Globalization of Peace, and Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters.

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