["a draconian resolution that would not have been accepted by any state that was not under direct threat of armed attack". SOUND FAMILIAR !!!]
Today, anger wells up within him when he watches the moving images emanating from Iraq of death, destruction and destitution. Blix says he feels sympathy for innocent civilians caught up in the Iraqi quagmire. As he stated explicitly in his 2004 bombshell Disarming Iraq: The Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Blix maintains that during the last few months before the invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi authorities fully cooperated with the UN inspectors. "The Iraqis cooperated on procedure even though they couldn't present us with documentary evidence. This was very strange because Iraq was a country with very good book-keeping," Blix noted. He acknowledged that Baghdad put up with UN Security Council Resolution 1441 which he describes as "a draconian resolution that would not have been accepted by any state that was not under direct threat of armed attack". Al-Ahram via Information Clearing House: 'We told them we could not find evidence' Almost two years after the invasion of Iraq, Hans Blix denounced the US for opting for military intervention over inspection. By Gamal Nkrumah and Dina Ezzat http://207.44.245.159/article8027.htm 02/10/05 "Al-Ahram" - - Nobody could accuse Hans Blix of slacking in his last days on the job. Exactly two years this week the former United Nations Monitoring, Verification Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) chief faced former US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the explosive UN Security Council session of 5 February 2003 in which a straight-faced Powell brandished a little glass tube that allegedly contained material that provided evidence that the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein developed chemical weapons. Powell so desperately wanted to convince the UN Security Council to pass a resolution sanctioning military intervention in Iraq. Powell hoped that pulling a little trick he would at least impress Blix and Mohamed El- Baradie, the Egyptian-born director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who were supervising the search for the alleged Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Obviously, the experts knew better. The Americans were behaving impetuously, Blix and El-Baradie concurred, insisting that they had not been able to find a shred of evidence supporting Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. Notwithstanding Blix's protests, five weeks after Powell's remonstrations at the UN, the US invaded Iraq in what Blix describes as "a pre- meditated but not pre-determined war". With the US-led invasion of Iraq, the international inspectors never returned to Iraq. The US conducted its own inspection instead. America's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was in vain. A little over two weeks ago, the White House declared that it suspended the search for the lethal weapons and that no such weapons were found in Iraq. "We [as international inspectors] could have concluded our search with the same results," Blix told Al-Ahram Weekly. "International inspection under the auspices of the UN would not have cost that much money, blood or suffering," he added. The US was determined to go to war, Blix told the Weekly. "But the chance of finding evidence of weapons of mass destruction was fast receding," Blix said. "We told them we could not find evidence. We could not have said then that there were no weapons," he added. "International inspection came closer to truth than the intelligence agencies of the world's most powerful nations," Blix pointedly stated. <...> Serbian News Network - SNN news@antic.org http://www.antic.org/
