Blix: Good man, wrong place

by Paul Reynolds BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

Dr Hans Blix, the mild-mannered Swedish former diplomat who is retiring as the head of the UN weapons inspectorate Unmovic, was a good man in perhaps the wrong place.

Nobody challenged his integrity but his diffident, almost academic approach failed to provide decisive leadership in the highly politicised atmosphere of Iraqi weapons inspections.

Blix retires without finding weapons of mass destruction

Mixed reception

For the Americans he was too weak a figure, prone to giving Iraq the benefit of doubt. They did not really trust him because, as head of the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) between 1981 and 1997 he had failed to spot that Iraq had a nuclear weapons programme.

Yet nor did he appeal much to countries like France which wanted him to demolish the American case with the results of the inspections - which had turned up nothing.

The inspections progress assessments he made to the Security Council on 27 January and 7 March were models of impartial analysis but gave no clear verdict.

In the first speech he attacked Iraq. Then he switched tactics in the second and criticised the United States.

He might argue that there was no clear picture but if he wanted inspections to continue, as he implied, he did not make that obvious enough.

He was easily swept aside by the determination in Washington to give Saddam Hussein no benefit of any doubt.

Fatal disagreement

And on individual issues, he did not always draw the conclusion which was available. Take VX nerve gas for example - 10 milligrammes of which on the skin can kill.

The earlier Iraq inspections team Unscom said that when it left in 1998, 1.5 tonnes of VX was unaccounted for.

However, its report reveals that Iraq told the inspectors where the VX had been destroyed and that chemical elements connected to the agent were indeed found at the site - though not enough to be conclusive.

The case that Iraq retained VX was therefore weak.

Food testing laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen Blix response to Colin Powell UN briefing

Dr Blix never really took advantage of this type of evidence to express doubts openly.

Instead he allowed critics of weapons inspectors to turn unaccounted-for material - stuff which had simply disappeared - into an accusation that actual weapons existed.

Thus Mary Matalin, an important shaper of opinion within the Bush administration, was able to declare on US television that "He (Saddam) has VX." She was not challenged.

Hans Blix did try in his second UN address to pull apart some of the American claims.

He said that his inspectors had not found any of the "mobile biological weapons laboratories" which the US Secretary of State Colin Powell had described to the Security Council.

Dr Blix remarked dryly that: "food testing laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen... and seed processing equipment."

ElBaradei was more outspoken

This was an embarrassment to Washington but Dr Blix still avoided a confrontation by his use of mild and at times obscure language.

His colleague at the IAEA Dr Mohamed ElBaradei was far more outspoken. His dismissal of the British claim that Iraq had sought uranium from an African country was forceful and effective.

He also undermined another of the key claims made against Iraq, that it was trying to import tubes from which to make a centrifuge device to separate uranium-235 needed for a nuclear explosion.

He said that the tubes were consistent with Iraqi explanations that they were for rocket barrels.

If Dr ElBaradei had been head of Unmovic, the United States and United Kingdom would probably have had a far harder task to justify their case.

"Vast uncertainty"

Not that Hans Blix was helped in any way by the obfuscations of the Iraqis who appeared to have misread the threat entirely.

The result was a vast uncertainty about what the true situation in Iraq was.

After the war, Dr Blix remarked he had some enemies in the Pentagon and accused the US and UK of planning the war well in advance and choosing evidence which fitted their plan.

But he did so in his usual quiet way. He was wistful and regretful rather than angry and bitter. It is his style.

He now says he will return to writing about international law. His experience of recent international law should certainly come in handy.