"I think it has been one of the disturbing elements that so much of the intelligence on which the capitals [Washington and London] built their case seems to have been shaky," Blix told the BBC.
He said it was "very, very disturbing" that US intelligence had failed to identify as fake documents suggesting that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger.
British officials now admit that documents purporting to show that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium to develop nuclear weapons were forgeries.
The claim that that Saddam Hussein was trying to procure uranium from Niger, in west Africa, was presented as hard intelligence-based evidence in the dossier on Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction which the government published in September.
The claim was taken seriously by the UN weapons inspectors until, with the help of independent experts, they found that the documents were forged.
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