ANALYSIS: Hans Blix: our man in Iraq (01/26/03)

ANALYSIS

Hans Blix: our man in Iraq

by David Marples

While the world awaits the results of the investigation into weapons of mass destruction in Iraq by a United Nations commission, it is worth noting the chequered career of the head of this team, Dr. Hans Blix.

Dr. Blix, oddly enough, holds a doctorate in international and constitutional law, rather than nuclear physics. He began his career in Sweden as a diplomat, but one who was outspoken in favor of Sweden's ambitious but much-criticized nuclear power program. In 1981 Dr. Blix became the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, under the auspices of the United Nations. At that time the IAEA was trying to enlist the Soviet Union, a growing nuclear-energy using state, as a signatory member.

In 1985 the Soviet Union permitted IAEA inspectors on its territory for the first time. One year later, the Chornobyl disaster occurred in Ukraine. Following investigations by the Soviet government, through a revolving commission, the IAEA ultimately took on the role of adviser and guarantor of nuclear power safety to the Soviet government. By August 1986, in an unprecedented event, a Soviet team led by Dr. Valery Legasov traveled to Vienna to explain the series of events that had led to the nuclear accident before Dr. Blix and the IAEA.

The actions of Dr. Blix subsequently aroused great controversy, especially in Ukraine and Belarus, the two Soviet republics most affected by Chornobyl's radioactive fallout. Dr. Blix reassured the public in the USSR that there would be few significant health effects from Chornobyl. He continued to advocate the development of nuclear power in the Soviet Union, and partly as a result of his advice, the Chornobyl plant continued to operate with some minor modifications.

In 1988, however, Dr. Legasov committed suicide, and in his posthumously published memoirs he revealed that Chornobyl suffered from significant design flaws that had long been known to scientists at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, of which he had been deputy director prior to his death.

It took a further six years, however, before the IAEA - still under the leadership of Dr. Blix - declared that the Chornobyl plant was fundamentally unsafe and should be shut down as soon as possible. By that time jurisdiction over the plant had moved from the USSR to the Ukrainian government, and the latter relied on nuclear power for some 45 percent of its energy needs.

The struggle to close Chornobyl, wielded mainly by the international community under the leadership of G-7, lasted a further six years. During that time, not only plant workers but the neighboring community was exposed to serious risks, not least from the collapsing structure built over the destroyed reactor unit.

On the outskirts of Kyiv at the Center for Radiation Medicine one can find a plaque inscribed with words of gratitude from the Soviet government to Dr. Blix for his work in overcoming the consequences of Chornobyl. For many Ukrainians there is a certain irony to this memorial, in that Dr. Blix, perhaps more than any other individual figure, sought to keep the Chornobyl plant in operation and declined to make any statement that might compromise the future of nuclear power.

Is he then a blinkered diplomat? What is surprising about Dr. Blix is not that he and his commission have as yet failed to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but rather that his mandate some 20 years ago was to inspect Iraq's nuclear program. Somehow, the IAEA failed to discover then that Iraq had begun a new and ambitious program to develop nuclear weapons.

Dr. Blix frequently states that his support for nuclear power cannot be linked to any nuclear weapons program. He points out that those countries that have developed nuclear weapons today did so prior to any decision to embark on a nuclear energy program. There is no question, however, that the two can be connected: Chornobyl's RBMK reactor, for example, was harnessed directly from the nuclear weapons program. The key official responsible for the early clean-up operation after the disaster was the head of the nuclear weapons ministry.

One can only respect a careful diplomat, and Dr. Blix's comments to date about the progress of his commission have been restrained and patient. On the other hand, the 74-year-old Swede remains one of the world's leading advocates of nuclear power, and his record as an investigator is at best mediocre, at worst downright negligent.

David R. Marples is professor of history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and director of the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, which is based at that university.

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