Global Policy Forum

By Mike Wendling

Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said in an interview Thursday that the British and U.S. governments used exaggeration and "spin" in presenting evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. But the British government denied the claims, saying that the existence of banned weapons was a "matter of fact" and that allied troops on the ground only need more time to find them.

Blix attacked a September dossier on Iraq issued by the British government, and particularly a claim inside the document stating that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) available for launch within 45 minutes. The dossier's contents have come under scrutiny during the Hutton Inquiry, a probe into the death of David Kelly, a weapons expert who advised the British Ministry of Defense.

"The U.K. paper that came out in September last year with the famous words about the 45 minutes, when you read the text exactly I get the impression it wants to convey to the reader and lead the reader to conclusions that are a little further-reaching than the text needs to mean," Blix told BBC radio. "One can read it restrictively but one can also lead to far-reaching conclusions and I think many people did," he said. "Advertisers will advertise a refrigerator in terms they do not quite believe in but you expect governments to be more serious and have more credibility," Blix said. "I understand they have to simplify things when they explain them, but nevertheless expect them to be more reliable," he said.

Blix compared the search for WMD in Iraq to a witch hunt. "They were convinced that Saddam was going in this direction, and I think this is understandable against the background of the man that they did so," he said. "In the Middle Ages people were convinced there were witches. They looked for them and they certainly found them," he said. "This is a bit risky. I think we (the U.N. inspectors) were more judicious in saying we want to have real evidence." "One cannot help but feel that the exaggeration, the spin, the hyping is also something that damages the credibility of governments," he said.

Blix went on to criticize the allies for pushing ahead with military action this spring. "They could have waited, they could have continued with inspections for a few months. We had been preparing ourselves for two and a half years, and we had only had two and a half months of inspections," he said. "They wouldn't have had the patience for that but now ... they say we must have some patience with the U.S. and U.K. investigators," he said. "The patience they require for themselves right now is not anything that they wanted to give to us."

On Wednesday, the former chief inspector told Australian radio that Iraq had probably destroyed almost all of its WMD more than a decade ago. "I'm certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed all almost of what they had in the summer of 1991," he said.

In response, a spokesman for the British Foreign Office said: "Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction is a matter of fact." "Successive U.N. Security Council resolutions concluded not only that he had them but also had used them against his own people," the spokesman said. "Blix's own 173-page report set out in great detail Saddam's history of obstruction of the U.N. inspectors," he said. "The process of searching for weapons of mass destruction is continuing. It will be thorough and deliberate, despite the difficult security environment."

In addition, the Foreign Office said that a parliamentary committee had determined that Saddam possessed WMD. "The Intelligence and Security Committee has concluded that based on the intelligence ... there was convincing intelligence that Iraq had active chemical, biological and nuclear programmes and the capability to produce chemical and biological weapons," the spokesman said. "They also concluded that Iraq was continuing to develop ballistic missiles. All these activities were prohibited under U.N. Security Council resolutions."

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