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Hans Blix: Bush and Blair behaved as if they were on a 'witch hunt' over
Iraqi weapons

Hans Blix is chuckling as he emerges from his study and settles into an
armchair in his spacious Stockholm flat to leaf through a document. The
document is no laughing matter: it is the Blair Government's now-notorious
dossier from September, 2002, which framed the case for war on Iraq, and
indirectly led to the death of David Kelly, the government arms expert. But
Mr Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, smiles as he cites examples
of the Prime Minister's "faith-based" approach to intelligence.

"Listen to this," he says. "This is Blair speaking, 'I believe the assessed
intelligence has established beyond doubt'." Mr Blix is mocking Mr Blair's
uncritical view of intelligence, which prevented the Prime Minister backing
down even when the UN inspectors returned from Iraq unable to report that
they had the "smoking gun" which would demonstrate "beyond doubt" that
Saddam Hussein had rebuilt his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Today he is angry at the lack of attention paid by the British and American
governments to the inspectors' findings in the rush to topple Saddam. "Why
the hell didn't they pay more attention to us?" he asks.

When Mr Blix, now 75, was called out of retirement to become chief UN
weapons inspector in March 2000, he suspected that Iraq retained lethal
stocks of WMD. Like other weapons inspectors, including Dr Kelly, who had
witnessed first-hand the "cat and mouse" game played by Iraq in the 1990s,
Mr Blix was hawkish. After all, under his watch as head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, the Iraqis had been caught red-handed as they worked
on a clandestine nuclear programme.

"My gut feelings, which I kept to myself, suggested to me that Iraq still
engaged in prohibited activities and retained prohibited items, and that it
had the documents to prove it," he says in a new book, Disarming Iraq: the
search for weapons of mass destruction. This is why he would not challenge
Mr Blair's claim on Friday about Saddam's WMD, that in November, 2002, when
resolution 1441 was adopted, "everyone thought he had them".

But Mr Blix's doubts set in when the inspectors were allowed back into Iraq
at the end of that month, exactly four years after they were pulled out, as
the US/UK bombing campaign of Operation Desert Fox started. They inspected
suspicious sites, acting on tip-offs from the intelligence agencies, but
they found no credible evidence of WMD. " I said, 'If this is the best, what
is the rest?'" In fact, he adds: "Considering how misleading much of the
intelligence given us eventually proved to be, perhaps it was a blessing we
did not get more."

He tells of a conversation with Mr Blair, one month before the war, amid a
controversy over the alleged presence of mobile biological weapons
production facilities after the inspectors had been unable to confirm the
intelligence claims.

"I added that it would prove paradoxical and absurd if 250,000 troops were
to invade Iraq and find very little. Blair responded that the intelligence
was clear 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."

What Mr Blix still cannot understand is why his doubts and those of his
professional teams of trained inspectors failed to make an impression on Mr
Blair and President George Bush, who continued to mislead the public with
categorical assertions about the existence of WMD with the fervency of
religious crusaders. He accuses the British and US governments of
"distorting" the reports of the weapons inspectors, who had said that
amounts of chemical and biological weapons remained unaccounted for. This
became an accusation that Iraq "retained" chemical and biological weapons.

Worse, he says, the Bush administration actively sought to undermine the
inspectors, accusing them of playing down the threat from Saddam's WMD,
particularly after Mr Blix refused to brand the discovery of an Iraqi drone
as a "smoking gun". He adds: "I still find it insulting if they believed
that our assessments were prompted by a wish to avoid finding incriminating
evidence."

He also feels insulted by the lack of consideration with which Americans
treated the inspectors. "I am flabbergasted that the American military could
believe there were such easily available large stores of this stuff when
Unscom (the previous inspection regime) hadn't seen any, and we hadn't seen
any. They had such a low opinion of the inspectors."

Mr Blix's doubts increased further after the war, when Saddam's chief
weapons expert, Amer al-Saadi, was taken away in a US Jeep, still insisting
on the official Iraq line that all the WMD had been destroyed after the
first Gulf War in 1991. "It was only then that I said to myself, 'There is
nothing there'."

Today, in the comfort of his flat scattered with rugs and modern Swedish
paintings and as he embarks on a new career at the head of an independent
Stockholm WMD commission, Mr Blix admits he feels vindicated for his
cautious and critical approach. His old nemesis, David Kay, the former US
chief weapons hunter, threw in the towel, proclaiming: "We are all wrong."
But Mr Blix maintains he was right. "I don't like to have any glee because
the matter is far too serious for that. But yes, I think the attitude we had
of a critical examination of the evidence, that is vindicated."

Although Mr Blix says he is not bitter, he is scathing about the
"faith-based" approach of Messrs Bush and Blair which he says was tantamount
to a "witch hunt". After a conversation with John Wolf, Assistant US
Secretary of State for Non-proliferation, who is accused of obtaining secret
information from his office, he says: "I understood his formulations to say,
'The witches exist; you are appointed to deal with these witches; testing
whether there are witches is only a dilution of the witch-hunt'."

His account is particularly damaging for Dick Cheney, the Vice-President who
continued to insist that Iraq had "nuclear weapons" long after the evidence
proved the contrary. Given Mr Blix's IAEA background, he is well-placed to
know that US statements about Iraq's nuclear potential were "too alarming or
exaggerated".

In the light of the bugging revelations, he is clearly smarting. "Although
it's nice they were listening to us, why weren't they paying attention to
what we said? They might have learnt something." Some leaders did believe
the inspectors. Mr Blix says Jacques Chirac, the French President, had a
healthy disrespect for intelligence. Although the French intelligence
services were convinced WMD remained in Iraq, Mr Chirac's thinking "seemed
to be dominated by the conviction that Iraq did not pose a threat that
justified armed intervention".

Mr Chirac believed that the intelligence services "sometimes intoxicate each
other". So were the French right? "I think they were, yes. Chirac was right
that the intelligence agencies intoxicated each other; I think they were
right on the second resolution, they were right also in saying that one
should defer, that one should have more inspections.

"They did not say that they would always say 'no' to war. The Americans
might have suspected that, but clearly March was too early a date." So what
were Mr Blair's channels that made Mr Blair so certain of the Iraqi threat?
Defectors, certainly. "They wanted Saddam gone." And the weapons inspectors,
many of whom from the Unscom teams of the 1990s remained as government
advisers. Mr Blix admits they must share the blame.

"Where was [Mr Blair] getting his information from? He could have had
reports from British agents that went further than the [Unscom] reports
did." Mr Blix does praise the British Government for pursuing the inspection
route - at least in public - to the bitter end. "I never doubted that Blair
was strongly advocating inspections all the way through; that the resistance
to that must have come from the Americans and mainly from the Pentagon side.
Even to the last they were trying with the inspection path."

But how sincere was the Government? "They certainly tried very hard." Mr
Blix takes pains to stress that he is no pacifist. While he maintains that
the Iraqi invasion was unjustified based on the nature of the weapons
threat, "you can take another line, on humanitarian grounds. I would be in
favour of that." From that perspective, Mr Blix sounds remarkably like Mr
Blair, who complained in his speech on Friday that international law, as
presently constituted, meant that "a regime can systematically brutalise and
oppress its people and there is nothing anyone can do".

On the wall of Mr Blix's study is a framed letter from Bill Clinton,
congratulating him after his retirement on his 16 years at the head of the
IAEA. "I don't expect I'll be getting one from Bush," Mr Blix says drily.

Disarming Iraq, the Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Bloomsbury,
£16.99

THE CV:
Born: 1928 in Uppsala, Sweden
Career: 1963-76, adviser on international law at Swedish Foreign Ministry;
1978, Swedish Foreign Minister; 1981-97, director general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (retired1997); January 2000, executive
chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission;
January 2004, chairman of independent international commission on WMD, based
in Stockholm.
Married to Eva Kettis, two sons

The Monday Interview: Retired Chief UN Weapons Inspector
By Anne Penketh in Stockholm
The Independent newspaper - London, 08 March 2004



GREENPEACE.ORG.UK STATEMENT ON IRAQ WHISTLE-BLOWER CASE:

Government faces further headache over legal case for Iraq war
Last edited: 28-02-2004

Whistle-blower case has 'huge implications' for Greenpeace protesters

Tony Blair faces further embarrassment in less than a fortnight, when
fourteen Greenpeace volunteers appear in court on charges relating to an
anti-war protest. Their case has taken on great significance since the
Crown
Prosection Service (CPS) claimed the case against Katherine Gun was
dropped
because they could not "disprove the defence of necessity" -- that is to
say, they could not counter the defence that her actions were justified to
save lives.

The so-called Marchwood Fourteen occupied tanks at the Southampton
military
port in February last year. Throughout their case the defendants - all
Greenpeace volunteers - have argued that their actions were necessary to
prevent loss of life. With the CPS now saying they could not have
disproved
such a defence in the Gun case, Greenpeace lawyers wonder how the CPS will
proceed against the fourteen.

In a further development Greenpeace has today written to the CPS asking it
for the Attorney-General's full advice to government on the legality of
the
war. Lawyers for the group claim access to the full advice is vital if the
defendants are to be allowed a proper defence. Greenpeace has given the
CPS
24 hours to produce the full advice, otherwise the group will renew its
request for the advice in court on the first day of the trial, set for
March
9th.

Greenpeace legal adviser Kate Harrison said, "The protesters thought the
war
was illegal. We think it is essential for a fair trial that they see the
full Attorney General's legal advice and the basis on which it was made."

"Since the Katharine Gun trial it would appear that the Attorney General
probably thought at the time of the protest that the war would be unlawful
and that the Foreign Office and other advisors thought so too."

The case against the fourteen will be held at Southampton Magistrate's
court
from March 9th.

Further information
Greenpeace opposed the war in Iraq and campaigned actively to prevent it.
We
joined the Stop the War coalition and made submissions to the Foreign
Affairs Select Committee on the illegality of the war, see
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk...0219to0222.pdf

For more information contact the Greenpeace press office
on 020 7865 8255 or 07801 212967 or 07801 212968
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/Multime...eport/6206.pdf