Hans Blix

Diplomat

1928-06-28

Quotes by Hans Blix

• Negotiations with Iran, especially, will not be easy under any circumstances, but I suspect that they might be somewhat less difficult if the nuclear-weapon states could show that their requests are part of a broader effort to lead the world, including themselves, toward nuclear disarmament. Preventing further proliferation is essential, but it is not a recipe for success to preach to the rest of the world to stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable to their own security.

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• For some twenty years the window that opened at the end of the Cold War has been allowed to hang flapping in the wind. It is high time that the five nuclear-weapon states take seriously their commitment to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament.

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• For some twenty years the window that opened at the end of the Cold War has been allowed to hang flapping in the wind. It is high time that the five nuclear-weapon states take seriously their commitment to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament.

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• Negotiations with Iran, especially, will not be easy under any circumstances, but I suspect that they might be somewhat less difficult if the nuclear-weapon states could show that their requests are part of a broader effort to lead the world, including themselves, toward nuclear disarmament. Preventing further proliferation is essential, but it is not a recipe for success to preach to the rest of the world to stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable to their own security.

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• Iraq did not spontaneously opt for disarmament. They did it as part of a ceasefire, so they were forced to do it, otherwise the war might have gone on. So the motivation has been very different.

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• What surprises me, what amazes me, is that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons.

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• The country is not a democratic state. Therefore we fear that they might carry a recorder in their pocket or there may be bugs in the walls, and you cannot be absolutely sure that you get a straight testimony.

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• The Iraqis are not threatened by the Turks or by the Iranians or by the Saudis and they tell me that these are not weapons of mass destruction, they are weapons of self-destruction.

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• Look at the Palestinians with the huge, huge percentage of unemployed. What does that breed? Anyone who's unemployed in the world, you feel there's no meaning and there's a risk that you drift over to something desperate. Yes, we have to tackle the social problems as well.

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• They have been saying for a long time that Iraq made an effort to import active uranium, and my colleague demonstrated the other day that they came to the conclusion that it was a fake document that everybody is relying upon.

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