Quotes by Hans Blix

I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could – with 100 per cent certainty – know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.

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

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

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.

I also hear your president say that war is the means of last resort and I think he means that. I met him last autumn and he assured me that they wanted to come through and disarm Iraq by peaceful means, and that’s what we are trying to do as hard as we can.

I don’t think that anyone seriously fears that the world can be blown to pieces all together. But what one can fear and rightly so are regional things, like in the Middle East, India, Pakistan, the Korean Peninsula, borders in Africa, etc.

It’s true the Iraqis misbehaved and had no credibility but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were in the wrong.

The destruction of missiles requested has not yet begun. Iraq could have made full use of the declaration which was submitted on 7 December. It is hard to understand why a number of the measures which are now being taken, could not have been initiated earlier. If they had been taken earlier, they might have borne fruit by now.

The document had been sitting with the CIA and their U.K. counterparts for a long while, and they had not discovered it, ... And I think it took the IAEA a day to discover that it was a forgery.

The Iraqis have been putting themselves in a position to rejuvenate their weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.