Blix says war 'without foundation'

The justification for last year’s war in Iraq “was without foundation“, the former head of the United Nations weapons inspection team in the country said tonight.

The armed invasion damaged the credibility of the states which went to war and the authority of the United Nations Security Council, Hans Blix said, addressing an audience of 1,000 at the University of Edinburgh.

In taking armed action, America and Britain “ignored the views of the majority” on the Security Council and the net result was a “loss of legitimacy” for that action, he said.

He said that there was “great relief” that Saddam Hussein’s regime had been eliminated, but described the evolution towards democracy in Iraq as “uncertain“.

Dr Blix’s inspection teams were unable to make significant weapons finds in Iraq in the months leading up to the war.

He said: “The justification for the war – the existence of weapons of mass destruction – was without foundation.

“The military operation was successful, but the diagnosis was wrong.

“Saddam was dangerous to his own people but not a great, and certainly not an immediate, danger to his neighbours and the world.

“The states which we would have expected to support and strengthen some basic principles of the UN order, in my view, set a precedent of ignoring or undermining this order by acting too impatiently and without the support of the Security Council.

“As a result, their own credibility has suffered and the authority of the UN Security Council has been damaged.”

Earlier in his speech, Dr Blix criticised the US and the UK for trusting their own intelligence more than that of the weapons inspectors, who had not found the existence of any “smoking gun” and who had searched a number of sites and “in no case” found any weapon of mass destruction.

The action in Iraq has not strengthened confidence that intelligence is reliable, and it has proved that independent international inspection is more reliable than national intelligence, Dr Blix added.

He said: “It is easy to agree that there was uncertainty about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in March 2003.

“However, certainty, not uncertainty, was the justification advanced for the armed action.

“The governments undertaking the armed action put exclamation marks where there should have been question marks.

“We would like to be told about the real world, not to be shown a virtual one.”

Earlier today, Dr Blix was quoted in German weekly Stern as saying that the US and Britain “created facts where there were no facts” in the run up to war.

“The war was not justified,” he reportedly said. “The United States needed weapons of mass destruction to be able to wage the war.”

Tonight, the former chief weapons inspector launched a staunch defence of the role of the UN in international diplomacy, calling it the “most important multilateral church in the global village“, adding that “the legitimacy it can confer is far greater than any ad hoc alliances of willing states“.

And despite his reservations about the reliability of intelligence, he said that one lesson to be learned from the Iraq conflict was that “cooperation between national intelligence and international inspection was needed for the best result.”

He said: “International inspection supported by, but not remotely controlled by, national authorities, including intelligence, can be an increasingly important instrument in the struggle of the international community against the further spread of weapons of mass destruction.”

Dr Blix received a standing ovation after his speech.

He was speaking as part of a public lecture on the theme of Means of Reducing the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

A chair in International Relations was established in the Faculty of Law of the University of Edinburgh in 1947.

Single lectures or seminars are given by a notable public figure who is known as The Montague Burton Visiting Professor during his or her brief stay in Edinburgh.

Dr Blix’s book, Disarming Iraq, which recounts the process of weapons of inspections in the country, is due out next month.