Homepage Contact Us About Us Help/FAQs Shop Mail Jobs Forums
Search
Thursday September 2nd 2010


  NEWS
Previous Page  

Hans Blix Appears Before Iraq Inquiry


Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Source: Ananova


 

The motivation behind Britain's involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq will today be scrutinised with the appearance of Hans Blix at the Chilcot Inquiry.

The former UN Chief Weapons Inspector will be quizzed for three hours this afternoon on his role at the head of an inspections team tasked with searching for Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Dr Blix, who is now 82, is expected to outline his claims of disagreements with Tony Blair and senior officials in the Bush Administration.

Three years ago, in an exclusive interview with Sky News, Dr Blix said the invasion was "clearly illegal" and accused the then Prime Minister of not being completely straight with the evidence used to justify military force.

"They put exclamation marks instead of question marks," he said. "There were question marks but they changed them to exclamation marks."

In 2000, Dr Blix, a former Swedish Foreign Minister, was brought out of retirement by then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to head Iraq's inspection programme.

Two years later, as the Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), he led a team of 200 weapons inspectors back into Iraq.

Today he is expected to repeat frustrations first made in his book, entitled Disarming Iraq, at not being able to complete the inspection process.

His team was pulled out of Iraq just before the invasion despite his insistence to the British and Americans that he was experiencing some cooperation from Saddam.

"A UN inspection force of fewer than 200 inspectors costing perhaps $80m per year was pushed out and replaced by an invasion force of some 300,000 personnel costing approximately $80bn per year," he wrote.

In his 2007 interview with Sky News, he claimed war could have been prevented if his team's work had been allowed to continue.

"I think if they'd allowed us to carry on the inspections a couple of months more then we would have been able to go to all the sites suspected of by intelligence," he said.

"And since there weren't any weapons, we'd have come with that answer: there are no weapons at all the sites you've given us."

Dr Blix also used his book to question Mr Blair's judgement, describing a telephone exchange with the former Prime Minister a month before the invasion.

"Part of my conversation... touched on the role and quality of intelligence," he wrote.

"I said that while I appreciated the intelligence we received, I had to note that it had not been all that compelling...

"Blair responded that the intelligence was clear that Saddam had reconstituted his weapons of mass destruction programme.

"Blair clearly relied on the intelligence and was convinced, while my faith in intelligence had been shaken."

The former Prime Minister has since accused Dr Blix of "re-writing history".

Mr Blair told the Inquiry in January: "Hans Blix obviously takes a certain view now. I have to say in my conversations with him then, it was a little different."

He claimed Dr Blix's progress reports to the UN in early 2003 simply confirmed Saddam was never in "full and unconditional compliance".

Print A Printer Friendly Version Of This News Item
For more information click on or go to http://www.ananova.com
Sign up for free
to the following
military news;
Patrol Store special offers newsletter
Weekly Newsletter
Select both
& keep up to date!

First Name

Surname

Email address


  © NSI (Holdings) Ltd 2005
News Archive  Military Information  Site Map  Disclaimer