Chief
weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix says UN weapons inspectors now following
up Western intelligence
Dr
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, says that UN inspectors
have widened their net as a result of intelligence recently given
to them.
Dr
Blix was speaking in an interview which was broadcast on Newshour
on the BBC World Service, Monday 13 January 2003, 9.00pm GMT.
"We
have already visited sites that have not been visited before and
there will be more of them coming. We have widened our net as it
were. Whether the quality of work improves depends upon how good
the intelligence turns out to have been. We are going to test it."
Earlier
in the interview, Dr Blix said of intelligence reports: "It
is coming and we are going to act on it. I felt in the past that
sometimes they were a bit like librarians who had books that they
didn't want to lend to the customer but I think that is changing.
"We
have fairly good co-operation both with the Americans and the British
and other sources of intelligence and we are beginning to make more
use of it. They have given us a lot of information about how they
calculate their programmes and what size they are and so forth.
"But
we need what my friend Mohamed ElBaradei (Director General of the
International Atomic Energy Agency) called actionable evidence.
That is indications of where we can go, places we can inspect."
Asked
by Lyse Doucet for Newshour whether he felt the UN weapons inspectors
would be given sufficient time by the Americans to complete their
work in Iraq, Dr Blix replied:
"Well,
it could be that one day they will say 'move aside boys, we are
coming in.' That's possible but I think a great many people and
a great many governments would prefer to have disarmament through
peaceful means. It could happen but that is not our working assumption."
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