Hans Blix: "Five minutes to midnight"

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   "Five minutes to midnight"?
   What about the old "YOU'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!"
   The Doomsday Clock has its famous "minutes to midnight" report about the 
nuclear threats around the globe.  There was a novel called TWO MINUTES TO 
MIDNIGHT and a rodeo horse called FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT, as Googling the 
many hits shows.  OED for "minute" or "midnight"?
   After midnight, we're gonna let it all hang down.
    
  
Yahoo! News   Tue, Feb 04, 2003             
Blix warns Iraq that it's "five minutes to midnight" and pleads for Iraq to 
produce evidence of weapons programs 
Tue Feb 4, 2:51 PM ET
        
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS - Warning Iraq 
that it's "five minutes to midnight," Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix pleaded 
with the Iraqi government Tuesday to show that it is actively cooperating 
during his visit this weekend by producing evidence about its weapons 
programs.       
He told a news conference that Baghdad should take seriously U.S. Ambassador 
John Negroponte's warning that the diplomatic window is closing and the 
prospect of military action is looming. "I don't think that the end is there —
 that a date has been set for an armed action," Blix said. "But I think that 
we're moving closer and closer to it, and therefore it seems to me that the 
Iraqi leadership must be well aware of that." But Blix said that so far the 
responses he has seen from the Iraqi government have not indicated that it is 
prepared to provide the critical information that he and nuclear inspection 
chief Mohamed ElBaradei are hoping for during their Feb. 8-9 visit to 
Baghdad. That visit takes place five days before their Feb. 14 report to the 
Security Council, which many diplomats consider to be critical in determining 
whether there will be war or peace in Iraq. "I'm pleading for Iraq to enter 
cooperation on substance," Blix said. "The essential point," he said, is for 
Iraq to assure inspectors and the Security Council "that it will actively 
seek and present any items or programs which are proscribed or else, if they 
are not there, to seek and present credible evidence for their absence." He 
suggested that the commission of inquiry that Iraq set up after inspectors 
discovered chemical warheads be given more power and be extended to search 
for biological weapons. Such a commission, he said, could "really look around 
the country and see what is hidden by whoever, and come up with it and also 
come up with a viable mechanism for providing evidence that they have not 
given us so far." "If they really give us hope that, yes, we'll have the same 
determination on the substance as they have undeniably been, largely, on the 
process — that would be the best thing that we would come away with," Blix 
said. But he warned that time was running out, even though he and others have 
said they would welcome more time for inspections. "Isn't there five minutes 
to midnight in your political assessment?," he asked reporters. A reporter 
then asked whether that was Blix's assessment. "Well certainly," he said. "We 
all know that the situation is very serious."