Blix: US and allies are 'humiliating' Iran

Former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Feb. 26 that the United States, Europe and the UN Security Council are "humiliating" Iran by demanding that it suspend uranium enrichment before any negotiations and then dictating its rewards. He said the package of economic and political incentives put forward in June 2006 by the US and key European countries, which was later endorsed by the council, did not mention the key issue of security guarantees for Iran or adequately address the possibility of US diplomatic recognition if Tehran renounces enrichment. "The first incentive, I think, is to sit down with them in a direct talk rather than saying to them 'you do this, thereafter we will sit down at a table and tell you what you get for it,'" Blix said. "That's getting away from a humiliating neo-colonial attitude to a more normal [one]." "People have their own pride whether you like them or don't," he said. Blix criticized the demand first by the Europeans, then the US, and now by the Security Council, that first Iran must suspend enrichment and then there will be talks where "they will explain what the Iranians will be given." "This is in a way like telling a child, first you will behave and thereafter you will be given your rewards," Blix said. "And this, I think, is humiliating. The Iranians have resisted all the time saying, no, we are willing to talk, we are willing to talk about the suspension of enrichment, but we are not for suspension before the talks." "I would be surprised if a poker player would toss away his trump card before he sits down at the table. Who does that?" he asked. Blix said he wants Iran to suspend its enrichment program, "but this is poor diplomacy–a poor way to try to achieve it." Blix led the UN inspectors who searched for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the US-led invasion in 2003. Prior to that he headed the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. He now heads the Stockholm-based Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, which is sponsored by the Swedish government.