Conversation with Hans Blix

During a recent visit to Castine, Hans Blix, chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, spoke with BDN editors Todd Benoit and Susan Young. A former professor of international law at Stockholm University, Mr. Blix was the Swedish minister of foreign affairs and served as the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997. The following are excerpts from their conversation.

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Todd Benoit: Now that Saddam Hussein has been deposed and his human-rights abuses reaffirmed, is it still necessary to prove that he possessed or was trying to make weapons of mass destruction?

Hans Blix: We’d all like to know whether there are any. Here for a very long time, ever since 1991, there has been a conviction not only in the U.S. but in other parts of the world as well that Iraq not only had but possibly retained programs of weapons of mass destruction. And this was a major argument, after all, for starting the war. And then I think that’s natural that both the world and the U.S. public want to find out whether this particular argument was well founded or not. To be sure there were other arguments but … no one has any illusions about that – the most horrendous regime imaginable and it’s a great boon that that regime was taken out. … But to get back to the mass-destruction argument, I see armed action as part of a broader effort of the world to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and of proliferation, and President Bush has talked about it in terms of the axis of evil, with Iran and North Korea in addition. However, I think both he and others are quite clear that one size doesn’t fit all and the means of solving those issues may well be different.

So the context in which I see the effort is that the precursors of this situation is first the Israeli attack on the Osirak [Iraq] nuclear reactor in 1981, which was based upon an assumption or contention that it was intended for a nuclear weapons program. The second one was the U.S. attack on the chemical factory outside Tripoli in 1986 after a terrorist attack on a nightclub in Berlin. … The third case I see as a precursor was the U.S. attack after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam [Tanzania]. And that was the Clinton administration when they sent cruise missiles on some alleged al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and also sent some cruise missiles on a chemical factory in Khartoum which they later admitted was a mistake.

Now they talk about pre-emption, and two years earlier they used to talk about counter-proliferation as a more active form of preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and in these cases there was one nuclear and two chemical, but I think clearly [the war in Iraq] would hardly have happened if it had not been for 9-11. It enters into the category of a counter-proliferation by the U.S. and the determination to prevent proliferation whether they have multilateral support or not. I don’t think they could have done it … if had it not been for 9-11. Of course, 9-11 did not use weapons of mass destruction; it used conventional weapons with tremendous effect. But it evoked the thought of what would happen in the world and the U.S. if terrorists were to control some weapons of mass destruction. … So 9-11 evoked dramatically the risk of these weapons being anywhere and when the attention had stopped focusing altogether upon Afghanistan it started to look at Iraq.

TB: In searching for weapons in Iraq, will the United States have access to areas that you did not?

HB: There is one big difference for them compared to our situation, and that is that it is reasonable to expect that they will be able to get people to speak the truth without fear. Whereas we were in a society that was still under totalitarian rule, with very severe threats and injuries and penalties for anyone who said something that deviated from what the government’s line was. And also that we had great difficulty establishing interviews under which they could speak freely. In the beginning they insisted that they should have either official presence from their own government so that they would have evidence of what they said, or that they would be tape-recorded. We rejected both and then we brought pressure upon Iraq – “You say you have nothing [no banned weapons] so it would be excellent for you to have credibility.” They said, “All right, we’ll try to do that.” And we got a number of them, but we didn’t have time to have as many as we wanted to have. So that was a problem, another problem with interviews was interviews abroad. And the resolution authorized us to take Iraqi scientists with their families abroad, out of Iraq, for interviews. The thought was that if they go abroad and if they say something that they fear the government didn’t like that they would then have the chance to defect. I saw great problems in it and it was one of the points on which Washington and I didn’t see eye to eye. Eventually we might have done it, but I saw great problems in it.

I’m anxious to make clear that the U.S. and British and maybe Australian scientists who are down there now under Charles Dulfer, who was the former deputy executive chairman of UNSCOM [United Nations Special Commission], that they are competent people and that they are serious people. And contrary to what some people would think that I would feel, sort of believe that they aren’t finding anything: No, I am as interested in the truth as they are. I think the world should be interested in what is the truth.

Susan Young: There were many claims and counterclaims between the United States and Iraq and within the United Nations in the months leading to the recent fighting. Could you characterize the level of threat posed then by Iraq’s weaponry to its neighbors and as a resource for terrorists?

HB: Well, they’re two different things. The first, as much in itself, the immediate threat to the environment to the neighboring states: I think that’s very hard to say. The whole Iraqi military machinery was far, far less, perhaps half, of what they were in 1991, so I don’t think that’s credible. Nor did they perceive any such threat in the region. As to the possibility of handing over weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organizations – well, if they had some rudimentary, even if they had some of it, you don’t need an awful lot of anthrax, you don’t need an awful lot of botulism for terrorist purposes. We are familiar with the anthrax case of the U.S. and no one has said that was an awful lot of material and when you can have the postal service as your distribution agency you don’t need so much. But you don’t even need Iraq for that.

So an immediate threat? That is very hard to say. I think what they could say with some justification is that so long as you have that regime there, with the potential intentions they had and resources they had, a program could be revived at any time, this is correct. I think the answer to that is that to counter that risk you must have monitoring, you must have inspections in place. And that is the containment, that word’s not liked by everybody, containment must be there. It’s not liked because they say after one year people will not be so agitated and the guard will go down. This is true. On the other hand, the world muddles along with a lot of containment. As someone said in Berlin – we had containment for 45 years and thereafter the regime changed to the other side.

TB: What was your reaction to Colin Powell’s rejection of Syria’s proposal [of a weapons-free zone in the Middle East]?

HB: I was not surprised if he did, but he did talk himself about it, but I don’t think that’s really contentious because the zone concept has been advanced. So I think looking forward is what we should do now. … And of course when you look at Iran that’s highly relevant with the pair of Iran and Iraq, it was not too innocent, as we know we had a long war. And when the Iranians are now reporting that they’re building an enrichment plant, then I think it’s high time to ask myself whether diplomacy can do something. That brings me to another point. Although I agree that the spread of weapons of mass destruction is a very significant issue in today’s world after the Cold War is over, the first line of doing something about it is through foreign policies and security policies. States do not go for these weapons if they do not feel a need or perceive a need – there doesn’t have to be one – but perceive a need for the weapons. And if you can create through foreign affairs and security policies alliances or security guarantees, if you can give a feeling to them that they are secure then they do not have that incentive. So the road map and the effort to creating peace in the Middle East is the fundamental way of avoiding a spread of weapons of mass destruction whether through states or terrorist organizations. The second tactic is through export control policies, you make it more difficult for would-be weapons of mass destruction owners to get materials. The third one is inspections. You can’t stop it but you can deter because it would be discovered and that might be followed if they violate. Just in the case of North Korea, it would be followed by diplomatic reaction.

SY: You’re scheduled to step down as chief weapons inspector on June 30. What’s next for you?

HB: Well, I will go back to research, to lecturing, to writing, to promoting the peaceful use of nuclear power. I’m in favor of the use of nuclear power reactors because they produce no greenhouse gasses and no nitrogen oxides or sulfur dioxides, which were responsible for the acid rain and the dying lakes and forests that we have. I think a further expansion of peaceful nuclear power is possibly the most significant thing the world can do in order to reduce global warming. And I think that it is entirely responsible to advocate the situation when the safety of nuclear power has improved very significantly since 1986 with Chernobyl and 1979 with the TMI [Three Mile Island] accident and when in fact you can see that the availability time of the nuclear reactors have gone up in the US from 70 percent to well over 90 percent, the unplanned stoppages are dramatically fewer.

Secondly, the radioactive doses to stop the nuclear power plants have gone down very drastically as well. We don’t have drastically new types of reactors yet, they will probably come one day, but the fact is that perhaps we have now ones different completely from the Chernobyl type, they have proven to have a very high degree of reliability. The Chernobyl reactor was of a different type, the TMI accident, yes that was the pressure water reactor, but on the other hand you need not have any emissions to the environment because of the last shell and barrier function, the containment of the reactor. So I think that, particularly for our country, I want to advocate that not only should we retain nuclear power but expand it, we even have among possibly the lowest emission of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour generated and that is the real criteria. “Which technology is the one that is best for the country for producing global warming?” Then you find hydro and nuclear power significant and the best ones. The renewables, solar power and wind power, are excellent, but you are not going to give Shanghai the electricity by wind power or by solar power.