Blix disappointed as war starts

Chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix today expressed his disappointment at the decision to go to war when his teams had not completed their work of eliminating Iraq’s illicit weapons programmes.

"Unmovic had been making good progress with cooperation from the Iraqis," said Dr Blix, who signalled that he did not believe the UN Security Council had intended the inspection process initiated by Resolution 1441 in November to last less than four months.

In an interview recorded hours before the first missiles struck Baghdad this morning, Dr Blix indicated that it was by no means certain that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and said he was “curious” to learn what the Americans would find when they occupied the country.

Intelligence information purportedly indicating the existence of WMD programmes given by the US to his Unmovic team during their inspections had been largely discredited, he said.

Dr Blix told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We have never maintained or asserted that Iraq has WMD, whether anthrax or VX (nerve gas). What we have said is that their reporting on it demonstrated great lacunae in the accounting.

“But having something unaccounted for is not the same thing as saying that it does exist.

“If they had anthrax or VX, then it should have been easy for them to put it on the table. Of course, it is embarrassing and it is a loss of face, but it should have been easy.

“If they don’t have it, then it is very difficult for them to give the evidence.

“When the Americans go in, they will be able to ask people who will no longer be in fear and if the Iraqis have something, they will probably be led to it. I am very curious to see if they find something.

“The paradox is, if they don’t find something, then you have sent in 250,000 men to wage war in order to find nothing. It is also paradoxical for Saddam Hussein. If he has nothing, it is curious that he has been making difficulties for the inspections in the past, but not so much this year.”

Asked how he felt about having to withdraw his inspection teams, Dr Blix said: “It is clearly a disappointment. We began about three and a half months ago and I think we made a very rapid start. We didn’t have any obstacles from the Iraqi side in going anywhere.

“They gave us prompt access and we were in a great many places across Iraq and had managed to get going the destruction of the Al-Samoud missiles, and destroyed over 70 of them, with Iraqi co-operation.

“I think that after three and a half months, to call it a day and close the door is rather short and I doubt that when (the Security Council) adopted the resolution last autumn that they really had intended only to give three and a half months for inspections.”

Dr Blix said he thought the US had been dubious from the beginning of the inspection process that it would lead to Iraqi disarmament.

“The resolution adopted last autumn was one that was extremely demanding and perhaps they doubted that the Iraqis would go along with it and perhaps (they thought) we would have a stalemate or a clash from the beginning,” he said. “But they did cooperate with us and (the Americans) lost patience some time at the end of January or the beginning of February.”

American intelligence suggesting that Iraq had imported aluminium tubing for use in a nuclear programme and had signed contracts with Niger to import raw “yellow cake” uranium proved to be inaccurate, said Dr Blix.

“I have a high regard for intelligence, but I must say when we watched what came out of intelligence, we were not so convinced,” he said.

“We have the question of the aluminium tubes, which were meant to be for the building of centrifuges. This was much doubted, even by American experts.

“And you had the even more flagrant cases of the contract it was alleged that Iraq had tried to conclude with Niger for raw uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency found that this was not the case.

“These things didn’t do much to strengthen the stories coming from intelligence. The fact that we didn’t find things at the sites which we were given by intelligence also, I think, weakened their position.”

Despite the apparent failure of the inspection process, Dr Blix said he believed it would be used again by the UN, and thought Unmovic had set an important precedent in being a truly independent body, unlike its predecessor Unscom, which carried out inspections between 1991 and 1998.

“I think we have learnt a lot and, in distinction to Unscom, we also managed to show that we can have this as a genuinely international operation,” he said.

“We were not the prolonged arm of any intelligence agency anywhere. We cooperated with them and had good relations with them, but we were genuinely serving the Security Council and I think that is necessary if the UN is still to do it.”