Hans Blix

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Hans Blix in Vienna (2002)

Hans Martin Blix ( pronunciation ? / I ; born June 28, 1928 in Uppsala ) is a Swedish politician. He belongs to the Folkpartiet liberalerna (Liberalerna since 2015) and was Sweden's Foreign Minister in 1978/79 . From 1981 to 1997 he was director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and from 2000 to 2003 head of the UN Arms Control Commission ( UNMOVIC ). Audio file / audio sample

biography

Hans Blix comes from the old Jämtland family of Blix . He is the grandson of Magnus Blix (1849–1904) and the son of Gunnar Blix (1894–1981). He studied in Uppsala and Columbia University ; afterwards he received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in England. PhD. During his PhD he was a member of Trinity Hall . He also received his doctorate in law from Stockholm University in 1959 and an honorary doctorate from Moscow University in 1987 .

From 1962 to 1978 he was a member of the Swedish delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference (UNCD) in Switzerland . Between 1963 and 1976 he held several offices in the Swedish Foreign Ministry and from 1961 to 1981 he was a member of numerous Swedish delegations to the UN General Assemblies in New York City . In October 1978 Hans Blix became Swedish Foreign Minister in the Ola Ullstens government ; he held this office for a year.

From 1981 to 1997 Hans Blix was director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). On May 5, 1986 he was one of the first western scientists to visit the destroyed and melted nuclear reactor in Chernobyl / Ukraine.

Critics like his compatriot Rolf Ekéus accused him of "oversleeping" Iraq's nuclear armament at the time . The Iraqi regime bought the Osirak nuclear reactor in France at the end of the 1970s and also bought extensive equipment in Italy. This gave the Iraqis everything they need for uranium enrichment. This enabled the Iraqi regime to develop a nuclear program under the eyes of the IAEA. IAEA Director Blix certified Iraq an "excellent" cooperation at the time. In May 1991, Blix wanted to declare full compliance with the requirements of UNSC Res. 687 in his report to the UN Security Council. The testimony of an Iraqi "defector" ultimately prevented the report from being published. A month later, UNSCOM inspectors led by David Kay surprised the Iraqis when they were removing five-meter-high magnets from the Al Falludjah facility. In September 1991, UNSCOM inspectors accidentally discovered top secret documents relating to the Iraqi nuclear program. It was only after Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamal's flight in the summer of 1996 that the Iraqi regime fully presented its nuclear programs.

Blix led the UN Commission of Surveillance, Verification and Inspection from January 2000 to June 2003, when he was succeeded by Dimitris Perrikos . In 2002 the commission began looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but found none. The reports by Blix and the IAEA played a central role in the controversy in the UN Security Council over the ultimately withdrawn draft resolution with which the US and Great Britain wanted to legally secure the Iraq war .

On March 5, 2004, Blix accused the US and Great Britain of having no legal basis for their military action against Iraq. For some time he had been keeping a critical distance from what was then the “ coalition of the willing ”.

In his book Mission Irak , published March 9, 2004, Blix complains that George W. Bush and Tony Blair ignored warnings in intelligence reports to use caution in assessing allegations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction . In the book, he describes the clashes at the United Nations in the weeks before the Iraq war and the hostility to which he was exposed as head of the UN weapons control in Washington.

In 1998, Hans Blix received the Otto Hahn Prize from the City of Frankfurt am Main. In 2002 he received the Wolfgang Friedmann Memorial Award from Columbia University , and a year later he was honored with the Leibniz-Ring-Hannover .

2007, he was awarded the University of Cambridge , the honorary doctorate . At the end of the same year, Hans Blix received an honorary doctorate from the Royal Stockholm University of Technology .

criticism

In 1992 the Russian nuclear physicist Vladimir Chernosenko said about the deception maneuvers of various interested parties after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster :

Blix knew very well that an immediate shutdown of Chernobyl would have severely undermined confidence in the international nuclear industry. Blix also responded as a tactical politician.

SPIEGEL: As a representative of the nuclear power plant lobby?

CHERNOSENKO: Yes. On May 8th, Mr. Blix was in Chernobyl and circled around in the helicopter. He must have known that at that moment many millions of curies of radionuclides were being spread all over the world. Instead, he announced to the world public after his sightseeing flight that everything was under control and that there were no problems at all.

SPIEGEL: Did you speak to Mr. Blix?

CHERNOSENKO: I didn't see Mr. Blix personally, but I did meet his colleague, the IAEA security expert, Morris Rosen . After the disaster, he took the view that nuclear energy must continue to be advanced even if Chernobyl happened every year.

At the press conference in Kiev I publicly asked Mr Rosen how he could justify such a statement. He gave me the answer after the press conference; Rosen took me aside and warned: Don't ask such questions in the future, otherwise people will tear me to pieces.

The phrase "Given the importance of nuclear energy, the world could endure one Chernobyl accident a year" is also personally attributed to Blix.

Publications

  • Mission Iraq - truth and lies: the head of the UN arms control takes stock . Munich 2004, ISBN 3-426-27337-3 .

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ spiegel.de article overview
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ↑ Hans Blix hedersdoktor vid KTH ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kth.se
  4. ↑ Der Spiegel 5/1992: from January 27, 1992: We kill you very quietly. - SPIEGEL talk with nuclear physicist Vladimir Chernosenko about the nuclear lobby's deception
  5. ↑ zeit.de April 2011
  6. ↑ hollmannproduktion.de
  7. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)

Web links

Commons : Hans Blix  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Blix, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blix, Hans Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish Foreign Minister, Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Head of the UN Arms Control Commission
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Uppsala