Interview: Hans Blix – the man who won't give up

Hans Blix spent years heading the International Atomic Energy Agency, but is best known as the UN’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq. The “weapons of mass destruction” he was sent to look for proved illusory, but now he’s turning his attention to the real nuclear powers. He tells Debora MacKenzie how he’s trying to convince them to make their weapons disappear too

Could you have shown there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) if you’d had more time?

Yes. You can never prove a negative, of course, but we…