Former UN chief weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix has said he believes Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago.
He said intelligence agencies were wrong in their weapons assessment that led to war.
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In an interview with Australian radio, Dr Blix said the search for evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons would probably only uncover documents at best.
"The more time that has passed, the more I think it's unlikely that anything will be found," Dr Blix said in the interview broadcast today.
"I'm certainly more and more [coming] to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed almost all of what they had in the summer of 1991," Dr Blix said.
In 1991, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency found what it called a secret nuclear weapons programme in Iraq. It spent the next seven years dismantling Baghdad's nuclear capability, until its inspectors were thrown out of Iraq.
Before ordering the invasion that toppled President Saddam Hussein, US President George W. Bush referred to an imminent threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a prime justification for war.
Dr Blix spent three years searching for Iraqi chemical, biological and ballistic missiles as head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
UN inspectors left Iraq in March this year as US and British forces prepared to invade. Calls for their reinstatement have been rejected, with the US occupation authorities preferring instead to set up their own body, the Iraq Survey Group.
After more than five months of searching, no weapons of mass destruction have been found by the Iraq Survey Group, which consists of about 1,500 experts.
The US government has consistently said the search for weapons of mass destruction will take time and that it is confident evidence will eventually be uncovered.