¡¡UNITED NATIONS, March 15 (Xinhuanet) -- As the world reviewing the Iraqi war on its one-year-after, former chief UN inspector Hans Blix gave his own evaluation: a good military operation on wrong diagnoses.

    Blix, former chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission for Iraq (UNMOVIC), told Xinhua Monday in an interview that Iraq should have been exonerated of alleged illegal weapons as early as last May.

    "It is clear that there are no weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and that was very clear for us to say already in May last year,"said the former chief inspector who is here promoting his new book,"Disarming Iraq."

    Before the war started March 17 last year, UN inspectors were guided, or misguided to be exactly, to some suspected sites where they found nothing. "So we were doubtful to intelligence," Blix said.

    "In May, however, the Americans had interrogated a lot of people, and these people could not be afraid any longer," he recalled. "On the contrary, they will be rewarded if they pointed to any (illegal) weapons. So there are reasons to believe them."

    Under such circumstance, when all inquiries resulted negatively,"it was very clear by May of last year, there is no weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, he noted.

    "The war on Iraq is a good military operation on wrong diagnoses," he said when asked to make an evaluation. "They claim there is weapons of mass destruction, but the evidence they have was poor."

    He carefully refused to say that the open-fire order was made wrong on purpose, only said that the decision-makers in Washington were mislead by inaccurate intelligence.

    Looking back to the prewar struggle on war permit in the UN Security Council, he said the United States "underestimated the importance of the legitimacy that the UN can give."

    "They claim that they had the right to intervene there regardless of Security Council authorization, I think that was erroneous," he said.

    "I think that they didn't think it would matter if they have council authorization, but it did matter," he added, noting that the legitimacy of the whole operation suffered from the wrong judgement before the war.

    While blaming the invaders for neglecting the evidence-based findings of UN inspectors, he stressed "others didn't ignored."

    "I think those who would not grant authorization, they were looking very much of the fact that the inspectors did not find anything" wrong in Iraq, Blix said.

    Looking forward to the future international inspection regime, the former chief inspector said that the world body's weapons watchdog should not be dismantled.

    Disappointed by the findings of the UNMOVIC before the war, theBush administration had accused it of being useless and tried to get rid of it.

    "I think (the fate of UNMOVIC) is in the hand of the Security Council. The UNMOVIC is serving the council and we are in nobody's pocket," the former chairman noted.

    "I think it would be desirable that Iraq, when it get it's government of its own, that it continues to have monitoring which is foreseeing by (council) resolution," he said. "I don't see why one should go away from that. I think UNMOVIC should have that role."

    He went on to say that one should look forward "politically" tothe WMD free zone in the Middle East region, "including Israel and Iraq, of course."

    "So one should not dismantle inspection and one should increaseit in other places," he concluded. Enditem ¡¡