'US-UK made world worse with Iraq war'

"History will show that it was the US and Britain that consistently operated outside the spirit and letter of international law in their approach towards dealing with Saddam," he said.

He said "the world's two greatest democracies" had undermined the legal framework of the United Nations set up after World War II at exactly the time when the world needed multilateralism most, to fight a global war on terror.

"Saddam is gone, and the world is far worse for it -- not because his regime posed no threat, perceived or otherwise, but because the threat to international peace and security resulting from the decisions made by Bush and Blair to invade Iraq in violation of international law make any threat emanating from an Iraq ruled by Saddam pale in comparison," he wrote.

Ritter, a former intelligence officer in the US Marines who has been extremely critical of US war plans, was an inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, when he resigned, citing a lack of UN and US support for his tough disarmament methods.

The former arms hunter was discussing the official US report released Wednesday which found Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction before the war despite President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair's claim to the contrary.

Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are "clinging to straws" to justify their war against Iraq, Hans Blix, the former UN chief arms inspector in Iraq, said in an article published yesterday.

Blix, writing in The Independent on Sunday, cited the official US report which concluded this week that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction before the war despite the leaders' claim to the contrary.

Inspectors appointed by Bush to verify the president's assertions about banned weapons "have had to acknowledge that the reality on the ground was totally different from the virtual reality that had been spun", he wrote.