- Rolf Ekéus
Rolf Ekéus (born 1935) is a Swedish
diplomat . From 1978 to 1983, he was a representative to theConference on Disarmament inGeneva , and he has worked on various otherdisarmament committees and commissions.Between 1991 and 1997 he was director of the
United Nations Special Commission on Iraq , theUnited Nations disarmament observers inIraq after theGulf War . In late July 2002 he reportedly said in theSvenska Dagbladet newspaper that during his time in this position he attempted to resist attempts by theUnited States to use the Commission to performespionage . His successor as director was Richard Butler. Iraq suspended the inspections in 1998 after claiming that it was a cover for espionage.Journalist
Andrew Cockburn reported in Britain's The First Post that Ekéus told him how former U.S. PresidentBill Clinton attempted to preventSaddam Hussein 'sIraq from being certified as free ofweapons of mass destruction . Despite Ekéus' belief that Iraq was nearly certifiable as being free of such weapons, U.S. Secretary of StateMadeleine Albright announced thatUnited Nations sanctions would not be lifted until such time as Hussein was no longer in power. The Iraqi government responded by ending its previous cooperation with the U.N. weapons inspectors. [http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?storyID=6463]Ekéus later became Sweden's ambassador to the
United States and the chairman of the board of theStockholm International Peace Research Institute .According to the journalist
Christopher Hitchens , Ekéus "told me that he'd been offered byTariq Aziz in person, to his face, abribe of a million and a half dollars to change his inspection report. That was going on throughout the entire process. Rolf wouldn't, of course, agree to take it, but if they were asking him, it means they were asking everybody." [cite news | url=http://radioblogger.com/#001710 | title=Interview with Christopher Hitchens. | publisher=The Hugh Hewitt Show. | date=21 June 2006]In January 2000, Ekéus was nominated to head the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission (
UNMOVIC ), charged with investigating allegations thatIraq possessedweapons of mass destruction . But Ekéus' name failed to receive the approval of theUN Security Council , due to the opposition ofFrance ,Russia andChina , and soHans Blix was appointed instead.Ekéus was High Commissioner on National Minorities at the OSCE from 2001 till 2007, as well as on the board of directors for the
Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI ). Since 2005, Ekéus has been a Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).References
External links
* [http://www.osce.org/hcnm/25328.html OSCE Profile]
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