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Blix: 'US undermined inspectors'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2966639.stm

Quote:

American officials tried to discredit the work of inspectors in Iraq to further their own case for war, the chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has charged.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Blix said American officials leaked suggestions that inspectors had deliberately suppressed information to the media in an attempt to undermine their work in Iraq.
Excerpts of the interview were released just before Mr Blix was due to address the Security Council later on Tuesday in a meeting that could begin to determine whether he and his team are ever to return to Iraq.

His team was withdrawn shortly before the US launched a war to topple Saddam Hussein, whom Washington insists possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The US has since deployed its own teams to look for weapons, which it cited as the key reason for launching war, but so far none are reported to have been found.

Many nations on the Security Council say UN inspectors should be the ones to verify any new discoveries, and Mr Blix says his team could return to Iraq within two weeks if he was told to do so.

Mr Blix said that in the run-up to war, the US had seized on his alleged failure to include details of a drone and cluster bomb found in Iraq in his oral presentations to the Council.

"The US was very eager to sway the votes in the Security Council, and they felt that stories about these things would be useful to have, and they let it out," he said.

"And thereby they tried to hurt us a bit and say that we had suppressed this.

"It was not the case, and it was a bit unfair, and hurt us. [We] felt a little displeased about it."

He also reiterated his disquiet at how documents the International Atomic Energy Agency "had no great difficulty finding out were fake" managed to get through US and UK intelligence analysis.

Also disturbing, he said, was the question of who was responsible for the falsification.

US unenthusiastic

Washington has so far shown little interest in the return of UN inspectors to Iraq.

On Monday officials repeated that they saw "no immediate role for Dr Blix and his inspection teams".

Although no decision is likely to be made soon, correspondents say Tuesday's meeting could be the start of a diplomatic initiative aimed at persuading the Bush administration of the benefits to be gained from allowing the UN inspectors back.

The argument from many on the council is that independent UN verification that the weapons have been destroyed would help to win international support for the swift lifting of economic sanctions against Iraq.

big surprise, they did it in 91 too.

Although this will get all the predictible responses from each side of this "debate", I'm glad to see something from the BBC.

Somehow people have already forgotten, but WMD were the main driver to get us into the war. Regardless of other reasons (and there are many), the administration made bold claims. I would like to see them backed up.

Quote:

Originally posted by druptight
big surprise, they did it in 91 too.

They did what in '91?

If my memory serves me correctly Iraq invaded Kuwait in '91,
cause I know the Marine Corps did not send me to that friggen shit hole for a vacation.

blix is a farking moron.

he completely missed iraq's nuclear program some years back, which was neared completion. the CIA showed blix the program and THEN he noticed it and took credit for disabling it.

this was when blix was HEAD of the nuclear agency to determine if iraq had nukes rolleyes:

Blix is in a shitty position here. Being targeted to have your credability shot by the Bush administration before the war is a bad way of ending a 50yr+ carrier to make this world a safer place. Still he can't make any real accusations against the US because that would put all negoteations.

You could say that he has to take one for the team.

He has an interesting definition of "undermine." If by that he means that we dug up stuff that he intentionally left out of reports, then I guess we did. Kind of a weird way of undermining them, doing their job for them.

Quote:

Originally posted by MrSelfDestruct
He has an interesting definition of "undermine." If by that he means that we dug up stuff that he intentionally left out of reports, then I guess we did. Kind of a weird way of undermining them, doing their job for them.

He didn't leave the drone and cluster bombs out, they where in his written report. The Bushadministration felt that they could undermine the weaponinspectors by attacking that he didn't take it up in his oral report. And only the Bush administration though this was a smoking gun.

Blix is as irrellevant and redundant as the organization he works for.

Blix can bite me. I'm sure he would like nothing better than to earn some more easy money riding around Iraq with his eyes closed.

Gibber & crewsor
What would have made the UN irrellevant and redundant would be if it had just denied the fact that they had no indications of WMD and just went along and sanctioned the war to please the US. The US has still to prove the UN wrong.