Blix says no evidence to justify war in Iraq
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Blix says no evidence to justify war in Iraq, no evidence of al-Qaeda links
NEW YORK (AFX) - Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix challenged a series of accusations the US administration has made against Iraq, saying his inspection teams had found nothing to back them up, in an interview in the New York Times.
Blix told The New York Times that the progress report he delivered to the UN Security Council on Monday -- in which he determined that Iraq was defying international demands to disarm -- did not justify going to war.
But he acknowledged that "diplomacy needs to be backed by force sometimes, and inspections need to be backed by pressure."
The chief UN chemical and biological weapons inspector also told the paper he had not seen any hard evidence to suggest that the Iraqi regime is linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, as President George W. Bush alleged in his State of the Union address Tuesday.
"There are other states where there appear to be stronger links" to al-Qaeda than in Iraq, Blix said, citing Afghanistan as an example.
"It's bad enough that Iraq may have weapons of mass destruction," he added.
Blix denied that the inspectors had found that Baghdad was concealing and moving outlawed materials to avoid inspections, as Secretary of State Colin Powell had said, or that Iraqi secret agents were posing as scientists, as Bush had claimed.
"I think it would be terrible if this comes to an end by armed force, and I wish for this process of disarmament through the peaceful avenue of inspections," he added.
Mohamed ElBaradei and Hans Blix, the two chief UN arms inspectors, will give another update to the Security Council on Feb 14 on progress in the inspections in Iraq, International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said at the UN agency's headquarters in Vienna.
Fleming said Germany, which takes over the presidency of the Security Council on Saturday, had requested the briefing. She said she could not confirm whether there would be further briefings.
ElBaradei said in Vienna that he has not yet decided whether to accept an Iraqi invitation to return before the Feb 14 briefing, since "we need to make sure before we go that they (the Iraqis) are ready to move forward" on showing more commitment to arms inspections. |
