Blix says Iraq is providing ‘great deal more of co-operation now’
UNITED NATIONS (AP) – The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said yesterday that Iraq is providing “a great deal more of co-operation now” under threat of US military action and he hopes it’s not too late to avoid war.
“If war breaks out, of course, I think that it is a serious failure for the approach through inspection to disarmament,” he told a news conference two days before he delivers an important update on Iraq’s co-operation to the UN Security Council.
Blix said he would welcome the continuation of inspections and mapped out plans well into the summer. But he reiterated that he will not ask the council to let his teams keep doing their work in disarming Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
For many council members, a key factor in deciding whether to vote for a US backed resolution to authorise a war against Iraq will be tomorrow’s reports by Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN nuclear watchdog. The open meeting is expected to be attended by foreign ministers of many of the 15 council nations.
In a written report to the council last Friday, Blix said Baghdad’s disarmament efforts had been “very limited so far” but his news conference painted a more positive picture.
“There are greater efforts made,” he said. “And I think that responds to some demands in the Security Council that Iraq should be active, and we should verify.”
The chopping up of some of Iraq’s Al Samoud 2 missiles “is the most spectacular and the most important and tangible,” he said. “Here weapons that can be used in war are being destroyed in fairly large quantities.”
As well, Blix pointed to Iraq’s handing over “of some documents that have not been found before” and lists of people who participated in the destruction of chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles in 1991.