|
Blix
Slams ‘Bastards’ Of U.S. Administration
 |
|
"I
have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread
things around,” Blix
|
LONDON,
June 11 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - U.N. chief weapons
inspector Hans Blix criticized some members of the U.S. administration
as "bastards" who set out to undermine him during his three
years at the helm.
"I
have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things
around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media. Not that I
cared very much," Blix told the Guardian newspaper on
Wednesday, June 11.
In
a marked departure from diplomatic language with which he has been
associated, Blix accused Washington of regarding the United Nations as
an “alien power” which it hoped would sink without trace.
Asked
if he was targeted in a deliberate smear campaign, Blix, who will retire
in three weeks’ time, answered the British daily in positive.
"Yes,
I probably was at a lower level," he said, adding that "some
elements" of the Pentagon were behind the smear campaign.
Before
he had even flown to Iraq to relaunch the sensitive weapons inspections
after a four-year hiatus last November, senior U.S. defense department
officials were excoriating the septuagenarian as the worst possible
choice for the post.
‘Credible’
On
the inspection process before the U.S. and British forces launched their
attack amid Blix’s appeal for more time to find Iraq’s alleged
weapons of mass destruction, Blix said that the Bush administration
tried to “lean on” his inspectors to produce more damning language
in their reports.
More
than two months into the U.S. forces rolling into Baghdad and declaring
the downfall of the Saddam regime, no banned weapons, the main
justification for the invasion, have been found so far, putting
Washington and London under fire for “doctoring “ intelligence on
Iraq’s WMDs.
Blix
had earlier said that his teams followed up U.S. and British leads at
suspected sites across Iraq, but found nothing
when they got there.
“Only
in three of those cases did we find anything at all, and in none of
these cases were there any weapons of mass destruction, and that shook
me a bit, I must say,” he said in an earlier press interview.
"I
thought - my God, if this is the best intelligence they have and we find
nothing, what about the rest?"
The
U.N inspectors left Iraq few days before the invasion, but were denied
back since then amid the U.S.’s assurances that its teams would take
over the hunt for the Arab country’s alleged banned weapons.
It
would be much more "credible" if a team of international
inspectors were sent into Iraq instead of the 1,300-strong
U.S.-appointed group now conducting the search for weapons of mass
destruction, Blix said.
He
made it clear that U.S. President George W. Bush's administration was
particularly upset that the U.N. inspectors did not "make
more" of their discovery in Iraq of cluster bombs and drones in the
run-up to the U.S.-led invasion.
‘Agnostic’
Blix
said he "remained agnostic" when asked if he believed weapons
of mass destruction (WMD) would ever be found in Iraq.
He
said the prospect of them being uncovered was passing by "quite
fast and instead of talking about (finding) WMD they're talking about
the program. We know for sure that they did exist ... and we cannot
exclude they (U.S.-led forces) may find something."
Blix
said Washington's disappointment at not getting U.N. backing for an
attack was "one reason why you find skepticism towards
inspectors".
‘Desirable,
Reasonable’
The
life-long civil servant -who is looking forward to returning to a shared
life with his wife in Stockholm as he turns 75 - said he was convinced
that "there are people in this administration who say they don't
care if the U.N. sinks under the East river, and other crude
things".
Instead
of seeing the U.N. as a collective body of decision-making states,
Washington now viewed it as an "alien power, even if it does hold
considerable influence within it. Such [negative] feelings don't exist
in Europe where people say that the U.N. is a lot of talk at dinners and
fluffy stuff."
Blix
said that was especially worrying given President Bush's openly
proclaimed belief in the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes.
"It
would be more desirable and more reasonable to ask for security council
authority, especially at a time when communism no longer exists and you
don't have automatic vetoes from Russia and China," he said.
Washington
and London insisted to tip the balance in their favor and go to the
invasion, despite the vociferous opposition from permanent members as
France and Russia along with other skeptical members who argued that
there isn’t enough evidence that Iraq has WMDs.
Addressing
the U.N. Security Council last week, Blix said he felt
"disappointed" at the way the U.S. and Britain wanted to start the invasion without
letting the U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission finish its work.
|
