31+ Hans Blix Quotes On Technology, Nuclear Nonproliferation. And People

Hans Blix is a Swedish diplomat who has served as the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997. He is also known for being the chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission from 2000 to 2003. He is best known for leading the UN weapons inspections in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Hans Blix on leadership, life, technology.

Top 10 Hans Blix Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Never humiliate anyone.
4. International cooperation, multilateralism is indispensable.
5. Disarmament by war and democracy by occupation are difficult prospects.
6. Like I said, I'm more worried long term about the environmental issues then the use of arms.
7. But I would say if the Security Council is only relevant if it agrees with the United States, then we have come a long way in a direction that I do not like very much.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. It's true the Iraqis misbehaved and had no credibility but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were in the wrong.

Hans Blix Short Quotes

• The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.
• It was to do with information management. The intention was to dramatise it.
• Even on television, the wavelengths that you use, they have to be distributed between countries.
• We have not found any smoking guns.
• By and large my relations with the US were good.
• The world has gotten so interwoven.

Hans Blix Quotes About People

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

But in the Middle Ages people were convinced there were witches. They looked for them and they certainly found them. — Hans Blix

There are people in this administration who say they don't care if the UN sinks under the East river, and other crude things. — Hans Blix

Hans Blix Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

The South Africans decided that they would like to prove to the world they did not have any nuclear weapons and their decision was not doubted because it was the end of the Cold War, it was also the end of apartheid. — Hans Blix

I don't think that anyone seriously fears that the world can be blown to pieces all together. But what one can fear and rightly so are regional things, like in the Middle East, India, Pakistan, the Korean Peninsula, borders in Africa, etc. — Hans Blix

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

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. — Hans Blix

Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance - not even today - of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace. — Hans Blix

To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war...I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict. — Hans Blix

There was a very consistent creation of a virtual reality, and eventually it collided with our old-fashioned, ordinary reality. — Hans Blix

The nerve agent VX is one of the most toxic ever developed. 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tonnes. — Hans Blix

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

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. — Hans Blix

Life Lessons by Hans Blix

1. Hans Blix demonstrated the importance of diplomacy and negotiation in resolving international conflicts and disputes.
2. He also showed that it is possible to remain impartial and objective in difficult and complex situations.
3. His work highlights the importance of finding peaceful solutions to international disputes and avoiding the use of military force.