OSLO, Feb 7: Former chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Wednesday that United States troops should withdraw from Iraq and leave the Iraqi people to deal with their own security, but ‘not immediately’.

“I tend to think that the US will do well to draw down their troops and to leave the country,” Mr Blix told AFP after addressing a seminar in Norway about his experience of conducting weapons inspections in the country.

“Not immediately,” he added, “but as long as they are there, they are relieving the Iraqi groups of their obligation to work together.”

“There is a risk that, if they leave, it could blow up into a civil war. So I can understand the hesitation,” he said. “But on that aside, I think it would be wiser to leave it to them (the Iraqi groups).”

Mr Blix qualified the situation in Iraq as ‘catastrophic and tragic’.

“I can see only one success in the war, and that was the elimination of Saddam Hussein,” he said.

The US “could not eradicate weapons of mass destruction, because they weren't there. They did not establish democracy, far from it. They did not send a signal to terrorists to stop. There are more terrorists, more breeding grounds than ever before,” he said.—AFP