[Peace-discuss] Blix says he saw nothing to prompt a war

[patton paul]

Published on Friday, January 31, 2003 by the New York Times
Blix Says He Saw Nothing to Prompt a War
by Judith Miller and Julia Preston


UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 30 Q Days after delivering a broadly negative report
on Iraq's cooperation with international inspectors, Hans Blix on
Wednesday challenged several of the Bush administration's assertions about
Iraqi cheating and the notion that time was running out for disarming Iraq
through peaceful means.

In a two-hour interview in his United Nations offices overlooking Midtown
Manhattan, Mr. Blix, the chief chemical and biological weapons inspector,
seemed determined to dispel any impression that his report was intended to
support the administration's campaign to build world support for a war to
disarm Saddam Hussein.

"Whatever we say will be used by some," Mr. Blix said, adding that he had
strived to be "as factual and conscientious" as possible. "I did not
tailor my report to the political wishes or hopes in Baghdad or Washington
or any other place."

Mr. Blix took issue with what he said were Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell's claims that the inspectors had found that Iraqi officials were
hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent
their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such
incidents.

Similarly, he said, he had not seen convincing evidence that Iraq was
sending weapons scientists to Syria, Jordan or any other country to
prevent them from being interviewed. Nor had he any reason to believe, as
President Bush charged in his State of the Union speech, that Iraqi agents
were posing as scientists.

He further disputed the Bush administration's allegations that his
inspection agency might have been penetrated by Iraqi agents, and that
sensitive information might have been leaked to Baghdad, compromising the
inspections.

Finally, he said, he had seen no persuasive indications of Iraqi ties to
Al Qaeda, which Mr. Bush also mentioned in his speech. "There are other
states where there appear to be stronger links," such as Afghanistan, Mr.
Blix said, noting that he had no intelligence reports on this issue. "It's
bad enough that Iraq may have weapons of mass destruction."

More broadly, he challenged President Bush's argument that military action
is needed to avoid the risk of a Sept. 11-style attack by terrorists
wielding nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The world is far less
dangerous today than it was during the cold war, he said, when the Soviet
Union and the United States threatened each other with thousands of
nuclear-tipped missiles. On balance, "nuclear non-proliferation has been a
success story," he said. "The world has made great progress."

Mr. Blix said he continued to endorse disarmament through peaceful means.
"I think it would be terrible if this comes to an end by armed force, and
I wish for this process of disarmament through the peaceful avenue of
inspections," he said. "But I also know that diplomacy needs to be backed
by force sometimes, and inspections need to be backed by pressure."

The decision to disarm Iraq through force was not his, he said, restating
what has become a veritable mantra: It has to be decided by the "Security
Council, and yes, by Iraq."

Mr. Blix reiterated his report's key finding that Iraq had not provided
anything like the wholehearted cooperation he needed to certify that
Saddam Hussein was not concealing nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
His concern about Iraq's attitude, he said, led him to refrain from
explicitly asking for more time for inspections when he reported to the
Security Council on Monday.

"I haven't pleaded for continuing inspections because I haven't seen a
change of attitude on the part of Iraq," he said.

In the interview, Mr. Blix said that his examination of a liquid-filled
warhead that inspectors had discovered in a bunker on Jan. 16 found no
signs of any chemical weapons agent. The other 11 warheads found in the
bunker were empty, he said, adding that scores of samples his team had
taken across Iraq in the past two months had turned up "no trace" of
either chemical or biological agents.

Mr. Blix spent hours Wednesday in a closed meeting being questioned about
his report by members of the Security Council. Mr. Blix declined to
discuss his session with the Security Council. But diplomats said that the
United States ambassador, John D. Negroponte, had pressed Mr. Blix to make
public the "indications" he referred to in his report that Iraq had made
weapons with thousands of liters of anthrax it produced in the early
1990's.

Mr. Blix is said to have demurred, saying that the burden was on Iraq to
prove that it had destroyed any anthrax weapons. He also assured Mr.
Negroponte that he would probably be able to determine by Feb. 14 whether
two missiles Iraq has declared it is developing exceed United Nations
range limits. Mr. Blix stated in his report that the missiles seemed to be
a "prima facie" case of a violation by Iraq of Council resolutions.

In the interview, Mr. Blix reiterated his longstanding position that
"practical problems" prevented him from using the authority he was given
to interview Iraqi scientists alone, without Iraqi government minders
present, at a neutral place inside Iraq or outside the country. "We will
at some point ask somebody if he is willing," Mr. Blix said, noting that
inspectors were already "probing" the possibility of such interviews in
their discussions with scientists during inspections.

As for Mr. Bush's charges that Iraqi intelligence agents were posing as
scientists to be interviewed, Mr. Blix said he had seen scant evidence of
it. "There were some occasions where people didn't seem very
knowledgeable," he said. "But if it has happened, it's not from the top,"
and "it's certainly not anything that is common."

Mr. Blix said that the intelligence information being provided by
Washington had improved of late. But diplomats and American officials said
that tensions lingered over American suspicions that Iraq had infiltrated
the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission,
known as Unmovic.

Both sides agree that American satellites photographed what American
analysts said were Iraqi clean-up crews operating at a suspected chemical
weapons site they had identified within 48 hours after the information
about the site was shared with Unmovic. But the diplomats say inspectors
concluded that the site was an old ammunition storage area often
frequented by Iraqi trucks, and that there was no reason to believe it was
involved in weapons activities.

"It was a wild goose chase." one diplomat said.

But an administration official said there was "good reason" to believe the
site was suspect, and that Unmovic had waited a week before visiting it.

"Whether something was removed, or whether it was ever there remains an
open question," he complained. He noted that although the C.I.A. was still
providing inspectors with sensitive information, concerns remained about
Unmovic's ability to safeguard it.

"Iraqis may have bugged offices or hotel rooms of some Unmovic people," he
said, noting there were "several examples" in which Iraqis seemed to have
either "advance knowledge, or very good luck in going to places before
inspectors."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company