Blix optimistic about restricting spread of banned weapons: report

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Blix optimistic about restricting spread of banned weapons: report

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Former chief of the United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix still remains optimistic about preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the British Financial Times newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Events in Iraq would not in any way subvert the value and credibility of future weapons inspections around the world, Blix said in an interview with the paper.

Iraq did not dare to restart its weapons programs in 1998, when UN inspectors were thrown out of the country, for fear that they would be detected, said Blix, whose team were not allowed to finish their job and provide a definitive answer as to whether or not Iraq had banned weapons and intended to use them.

Al Qaida members have tried to get hold of chemical weapons, Blix acknowledged. But he said terrorists have so far failed to launch any devastating attacks with them.

In the interview, Blix also claimed that "everybody is becoming convinced that there are not any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and in all likelihood have not been for a long time."

"Weapons of mass destruction credibly shown to be used within 45 minutes constitute an imminent threat; the possible intention to produce a nuclear weapon within 10 years or even five years does not," said Blix, now head of a new independent commission on weapons of mass destruction.

Britain, the staunchest US ally on Iraq, published in last September a dossier on Iraq's banned weapons that claimed Baghdad could deploy biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so, which some critics say was "sexed up" to make a stronger case for the decision of the British government to join the US-led war against Iraq.

The failure to find any significant evidence of nuclear, chemical or biological materials in Iraq, when their supposed existence was the main justification for the US-led war against Iraq that broke out on March 20, has continued to undermine the case for the war many months after the fall of the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

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