U.N. Inspector Writes of Pressure From U.S. on Iraq

[UpInArms]

Blix's Book Says He Was Challenged About Arms Assessment on Eve of Last Report to Security Council

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41476-2004Mar8.html

The United States unsuccessfully tried to pressure the United Nations' then-chief weapons inspector to tell the Security Council that Iraq was in violation of U.N. resolutions just two weeks before Baghdad was attacked, according to the inspector, Hans Blix.

On March 6, 2003, the day before Blix was to make his last report to the Security Council, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf asked "in a rather discourteous tone" why Blix's agency, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, did not conclude that the discovery of an Iraqi aerial drone and a cluster bomb for delivering chemical weapons "were violations of Iraq's obligations," Blix writes in his new book, "Disarming Iraq," published today in the United States and Europe.

Blix said Wolf "tossed photographs of a drone and a cluster bomb on my table," which further irritated the former Swedish diplomat because of the possibility that the pictures had been leaked by someone on his staff or that his secure fax system had been penetrated.

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