By and large my relations with the US were good.
- Hans Blix Quote

I also hear your president say that war is the means of last resort and I think he means that. I met him last autumn and he assured me that they wanted to come through and disarm Iraq by peaceful means, and that's what we are trying to do as hard as we can.
- Hans Blix Quote

I can imagine that the Iraqis undertake the destruction out of fear. If they had denied it, if they had said no, that certainly would have played into the hands of those that would like to take armed action immediately. I have no illusions in that regard.
- Hans Blix Quote

I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.
- Hans Blix Quote

If public opinion still endorses military action that's one thing, but if they wait maybe it will not. So it's not only impatience, but there are several other factors.
- Hans Blix Quote

If you take the biological weapons in the United States we still will have perhaps a single individual who was able to make anthrax, dry it, and spread it through the mail and cause terror.
- Hans Blix Quote

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.
- Hans Blix Quote

Like I said, I'm more worried long term about the environmental issues then the use of arms.
- Hans Blix Quote

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.
- Hans Blix Quote

On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way.
- Hans Blix Quote

So interviews are a valuable tool, but under certain circumstances they'd be more valuable than others.
- Hans Blix Quote

The inspections started in 1991, right after the Gulf War. One of the conditions for the ceasefire was that Iraq had to do away with all of its weapons of mass destruction - biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
- Hans Blix Quote

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.
- Hans Blix Quote

The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.
- Hans Blix Quote

The world has gotten so interwoven.
- Hans Blix Quote

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.
- Hans Blix Quote

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.
- Hans Blix Quote