WMDC-statement by Dr.Blik-2006-Iraq

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Statement by Dr. Hans Blix at the UN Conference of NGOs

New York, 6 September 2006

I appreciate the opportunity to address this forum of non-governmental organizations.
Many NGOs provide help that is direct and vitally needed and many NGOs speak in an
equally direct way to promote and defend common global needs and values.
Governments almost inevitably see global issues through the lenses of their national
interests.

I shall take up two issues in which NGOs are doing great work and in which I think they
may do even more. Both have vital importance for human security.

• Demanding facts and transparency: Getting truth on the table.

• Waking up the world to the reality that the process of arms control and
disarmament has stagnated and must be revived.

In his New Year's message this year, the Pope spoke of 'peace through truth'. To solve
controversies we must seek an accurate picture and understanding of them. Without the
right diagnoses, how can we find the right therapy?

The search for truth is not easy.

NGOs can and do render invaluable service by critically examining information and
governments' actions - and inaction.

Rarely has the need for critical thinking been demonstrated as clearly to us as after the
invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and rarely have the reports of international fact-finders,
views of NGOs and public opinion been as ignored as before that invasion.

The world was told that the invasion would lead to the "moment of truth". It did and

the truth was that there were no weapons of mass destruction! Most had been destroyed
already in the early 1990s. In 2003 a state and a people were thus sentenced to war and
invasion on erroneous grounds, on "faith-based" - even "fake-based" - intelligence. A
brutal dictator was toppled. The rest remains a tragedy. It was not 'peace through truth'
but 'war through untruth'. How could it happen?

During the 1990s real knowledge about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs had
been growing through international inspections. This process of search for the truth
sadly ended in 1998, when the international inspectors were withdrawn. A few spies and
many defectors became chief sources of information and misleading reports were
accepted by governments that looked for arguments for armed action more than truth.

There is a strange irony that Saddam could probably have avoided the war, if the
international inspectors, whom he wanted out, had been enabled to stay in Iraq and
continue their reporting after 1998. There is another irony that the Alliance of Willing
states would probably have refrained from their invasion in 2003 and avoided their
current dilemma, if they had paid more attention to the reporting of the international
inspections, which resumed late in 2002.

This is sad history, but one important lesson to draw from the Iraq tragedy is that
international professional inspection, such as it has been practiced under the UN, the
IAEA and the Chemical Weapons Convention, is an important tool in the search for
truth. Such inspection is in nobody's pocket, it operates openly and legally and under the
control of the international community. The states of the world should recognize that
these activities provide a vitally needed impartial search for the truth.

The second issue I want to call your attention to is that of arms control and
disarmament. From the time of the Hague Peace Conferences of the 19 th century to the
present many NGOs have campaigned against the use of indiscriminate and particularly
cruel weapons and have had arms control and disarmament on their agendas. Indeed, how
can we think of human security and sustainable development or a humane international
community without an intense concern about the use of armed force, the flood of small
caliber weapons, the innumerable land mines that remain lethal, the cluster bombs and
the continued existence of weapons of terror?

A few months ago, the independent international Commission on Weapons of Mass
Destruction, which I had the honour to chair, presented a unanimously adopted report -
"Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms". Its
central message is that in the last decade the arms control and disarmament process has
stagnated and must be revived and pursued in parallel with the efforts to prevent the
spread of WMD to further states and to terrorist movements. NGOs need to renew and
reinforce their work to push this process.

It might have been expected that arms control and disarmament would become easier
after the end of the Cold War. The opposite seems to be true.

During the Cold War the nuclear arsenals of the US and the Soviet Union
would have sufficed to destroy human civilization several times. Public opinion
mobilized against the madness of the arms races and despite the intense political and
ideological competition each superpower was ready to accept some limitations on itself in
order to achieve limitations on the other and on states generally.

The Partial Test Ban treaty was concluded and largely stopped radioactive fallout from
nuclear tests; the Biological Weapons Convention prohibited the production and
possession of B-weapons and the Chemical Weapons Convention was negotiated
though it was concluded only after the Cold War.

In the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 a fundamental global bargain was made. Non-
nuclear weapon states parties committed themselves not to acquire these weapons and
five nuclear weapon states came to commit themselves to negotiate toward nuclear
disarmament.

The NPT has been - and remains - of tremendous value. Without it the nuclear weapons
might have spread to many more than the eight or nine states, which now have them.
However, the treaty and the fundamental bargain are under strain today. Iraq, Libya and
North Korea ignored their non-proliferation pledges and the five nuclear weapon states
parties are not living up to their pledges to move to nuclear disarmament.

The situation seems paradoxical. The deep ideological conflicts of the Cold War are gone
and there are no significant territorial controversies between the great powers. Yet,
although reductions are taking place in overstocked nuclear arsenals these are still
estimated to number some 27.000 weapons. What is even worse, the commitments to
further disarmament made by the nuclear weapon states in 1995, when the non-nuclear
weapon states accepted to extend the treaty and their pledges indefinitely, are being
ignored. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, concluded in 1996 after decades of
negotiations, is left in limbo and will remain so unless the US and China and some other
states ratify it.

Not surprisingly the 2005 Review Conference of the Non Proliferation Treaty ended in
bitterness with many non-nuclear weapon states feeling cheated. The World Summit at
the UN in September 2005 was unable to agree on a single line regarding arms control,
disarmament or non-proliferation and the Geneva Conference on Disarmament, has
been unable for about a decade to agree on a work program..

Sadly, in the last ten years we have been witnessing not only a stagnation in the sphere of
arms control and disarmament but also an attribution of greater importance to nuclear
weapons and interest in their development:

• Several nuclear weapon states no longer give pledges against a first use of
nuclear weapons;

• The development of a missile shield in the US is perceived by China and Russia
as a step potentially allowing the US to threaten them, while creating immunity
for the US;

• The development and testing of new types of nuclear weapons is urged by
influential groups in the US; in the UK many expect a government decision about
a renewal of the nuclear weapons program, stretching it far beyond 2020;

• The stationing of weapons in space is considered in the US; if it were to occur,
other states might follow and threats may arise to the world's peaceful uses of
space and the enormous investments made in them.

While these are intensely worrisome developments that need to be recognized and
addressed by the NGO community the current global discussion is focused on some other
risks, notably that Iran and possibly other states could break out from the NPT and
acquire nuclear weapons; that North Korea may have such weapons; and that terrorists
may seek weapons of mass destruction.

It is easy to recognize the seriousness of these matters and the importance of countering
the risks. However, it is hard to see that the development of new types of nuclear
weapons could be meaningful to counter terrorism or dissuading states which might be
bent on nuclear proliferation. A boosting of the nuclear option in states that have them
combined with military threats seem far more likely to encourage nuclear proliferation in
states which feel threatened than dissuading them from such proliferation. Preaching
arms control to others while practicing rearmament is not a recipe for success.

What needs to be done? After the two world wars in the 20th century new global orders
were sought. After the Cold War the whole world - including the great powers - needs to
get serious about human security through cooperation, development, the rule of law
and arms control and disarmament. The security of states and people must be sought
more through cooperation and negotiation and less through military threats and force.
The disasters in Iraq and Lebanon show the consequences of an exaggerated belief in and
reliance on military surgery.

Many steps need, can and should be taken and NGO:s may help. Let me cite just a few
examples from the Report of the WMD Commission

• The elimination of chemical and biological weapons must be completed and the
conventions strengthened;

• The march away from the nuclear option must be resumed. Of immediate
importance in is:

• The ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by the US and other
states. Bringing this treaty into force will send a resounding signal that the whole
world is again moving away from these weapons. It will also impede a further
qualitative development of nuclear weapons;

• The conclusion of a treaty prohibiting the production of fissile material for
weapons (FMCT) and providing for effective international verification. By
ending the production of weapons grade uranium and plutonium and gradually
dismantling weapons we can slowly reduce the existing pile of nuclear weapons
and be sure that no new piles are growing up.

• The full use of the potential of the United Nations and the Secretary-General to
help solve controversies. Let me end by paying tribute to Kofi Annan for the
outstanding way he has performed. Let me end by also noting that, while the UN
Charter, drafted at the end of World War II, does not rule out the use of military
force in some situations its authors had seen the effects of war, favoured
disarmament and were not trigger happy.