Word: blix
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...Still, it's not only Blix's more diplomatic style that might alarm the White House - there's also the fact that the Swede served as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1981-1997, during which time both Iraq and North Korea managed to pursue undetected nuclear weapons programs. Again, though, Blix counters that the IAEA is only as good as the intelligence provided by its member states, and if the U.S. and others weren't able to detect signs of such programs, neither could the IAEA. And, he says, the experience taught him that "not seeing...
...exactly the sort of fellow Bush Administration hawks would have chosen to send to Baghdad as their point man on disarmament. Blix was actually as a compromise appointment in 2000, when Iraq rejected the Washington-backed Rolf Ekeus to replace Richard Butler, the abrasive Australian whose confrontational tactics had more than once precipitated crises. His reported reluctance to take the job couldn't have been more graphic - Blix was on vacation in Antarctica when Kofi Annan called to recruit...
...community to his non-compliance. One can only speculate on how Vice President Cheney, for example, might have greeted the news that the 72-year-old Swedish diplomat had subjected his inspectors to a program of "cultural sensitivity" training so as to avoid them unnecessarily offending the Iraqis. But Blix is unmoved by any criticism of such choices. "We are not coming to Iraq to harass or insult or humiliate them," he told the BBC last month. "That is not our purpose." At the same time, he told a British newspaper, "You have to behave yourself but you have...
...Washington was also pleased this week when Blix told the Security Council that his inspections would be effective only if the UN body was willing to "exercise the influence that may be necessary to ensure the implementation of its resolutions" - in other words, to signal Baghdad that there would be negative consequences for non-compliance. The U.S. took those words as support in its battle with France over just how strong an "or-else" clause to include in a new resolution. But Blix also raised some practical difficulties with aspects of the U.S. draft resolution, such as questioning Iraqi scientists...
...better or worse (from the Bush Administration's point of view), Blix will be on point. And that means the Administration will work hard to persuade him of its way of thinking as the price for giving him the united Security Council backing he says is vital to his ability to do his job. Like his predecessors, Blix will invariably find himself caught between the Iraqis and the Americans, as the referee of a game in which each side is looking to expose the other's malfeasance. That may be why he flatly rejects the idea that he holds...