Blix calls for caution on Iran

By Andrew Beatty

Date: 15/06/06

Hans Blix, the former chief weapons inspector of the United Nations, has cast doubt on the EU's offer to Iran aimed at preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

He said the international community was unlikely to allow Iran to enrich uranium, even though that was one of the main planks of the offer developed by France, Germany and the UK and now backed by the US, China and Russia.

In an interview with European Voice, Blix said that it was hard to see how the international community would allow Iran to operate technology that could also be used to build a nuclear weapon.

Under the offer, which was delivered to Tehran by Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, on

6 June, Iran would initially be required to suspend uranium enrichment but would be allowed to resume it once the international community was convinced it was for peaceful purposes.

"I don't see any verification in Iran that would be so intrusive or so conclusive that the European states and the United States would say 'fine, now go ahead and enrich as much as you want to'," said Blix.

"They do not have the confidence and regardless of how much you explore, you cannot prove a negative."

His views are likely to resonate in Tehran, where the government is currently weighing up the strategic costs of suspending enrichment in return for a range of economic and political incentives.

The right to enrich uranium has become a major domestic issue in Iran and is the chief stumbling block in the way of a deal that would end the three-year stand-off between Iran and the international community.

During a summit that begins in Brussels today (15 June), EU leaders will "urge Iran to respond to this far-reaching initiative". The EU is likely to give Iran "weeks, not months" to respond, according to diplomats.

But Blix also said that the EU and US might need to offer security guarantees to make sure Iran does not walk away from the table.

"We know that in practically all cases where states have gone for nuclear weapons it has been out of perceived security interests. If you want to take someone away from the intention to develop nuclear weapons then you have to look at their security and the concerns they have."

While diplomats said that Iranian negotiators had not explicitly sought security guarantees, Blix said: "It is improbable that they would not be interested."

He also warned that, while Iraq and Iran were different cases, lessons still needed to be learned from the failure to find nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in Iraq.

"We ought to be very cautious in asserting that Iran is planning and working to get nuclear weapons", he said. "After Iraq with all the spin and all the evidence that proved to be fake, one should be cautious.

"Iran has been very open in the last few years, they have applied the additional protocol, in fact they have gone beyond the additional protocol."

But he said Iran's nuclear facilities were much more advanced than those in Iraq.

"The difference between the Iranian case and the Iraqi case is that in Iraq the nuclear facilities were destitute, they were heaps of rubble, they could do nothing with it...if there was one dossier that was really miserable it was trying to prove that that there were nuclear [weapons]."

Blix currently heads the independent Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, which recently presented its findings to the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The report warned that international efforts are needed to prevent another arms race similar to that during the Cold War.

It also called on EU nuclear powers France and the UK to reduce their nuclear arsenals.

Comments by Hans Blix, the former chief weapons inspector of the United Nations, who cast doubt on the EU's offer to Iran aimed at preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.