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Allison Hanes
CanWest News Service; National Post
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
CREDIT: Associated Press
Hans Blix, chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission and former United Nations chief weapons inspector.
TORONTO - The contemptuous tone of United States admonishments to Iran over its nuclear ambitions is but one source of the humiliation, alienation and rage that propels disaffected Muslim youth to espouse fanaticism, Hans Blix said Monday.
Speaking to the National Post after his speech to mark the opening of the International Law Association conference in Toronto, the former diplomat, United Nations weapons inspector and champion of nuclear disarmament touched briefly on the wave of arrests that swept southern Ontario over the weekend.
''To me, as a foreigner passing through here, I would fit it in to the larger picture of the Muslim world much of which feels humiliated and infuriated by the non-Muslim world's attitude towards it,'' Blix said, speculating about the possible motivations of 17 young men, mostly raised in Canada, to allegedly contemplate launching homegrown terror attacks.
In his view, the majority of Muslims in Canada, abroad or in the Middle East, do not support Iran's drive to enrich uranium, which the international community fears one day could fuel a nuclear weapons program, but he said that the silent majority are often reluctant to raise their voices in opposition when assailed by tough talk that borders on insulting.
For a destructive handful, inflammatory rhetoric becomes a call to arms.
''If you talk about Iran 'behaving itself' or being a 'troublemaker' that is sort of a neocolonialist attitude toward a group of states of majority Muslim faith,'' said Blix. ''How we behave vis-a-vis Iran is important.
''Iran is a proud nation.''
There are lessons to be learned from the Iraq experience, said Blix, who as chief UN inspector turned that country upside down without finding biological or chemical weapons in the leadup to the American invasion in 2003.
Recently, Blix headed an independent commission on weapons of mass destruction established by his native Sweden, which recommended a world summit to kick off a fresh round of negotiations on nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and keeping bombs out of the hands of terrorists.
While the international community is rightly concerned about Iran's enrichment capabilities, which it says is for the purpose of energy production, Blix said the country is a long way off from producing a war head.
''They seem to have come to enrich a milligram of uranium at four per cent,'' he said. ''It is absurd to talk about an acute threat.''
There is plenty of time, said Blix, to pursue negotiations with Iran that favour a carrot approach, much like those playing out now with North Korea.
He called the stick-wielding United States threat of military action to show how serious it is pointless when its troops are already camped out next door in Iraq.
''Personally, I think it's counterproductive,'' Blix said. ''This is not language that gives results in negotiations maybe votes in Wisconsin.''
