LONDON, March 5: Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix believes the invasion of Iraq was illegal, a British newspaper said on Friday.

Mr Blix told the London-based Independent daily that a second United Nations resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force would have been required to make the invasion of Iraq lawful.

"I don't buy the argument the war was legalized by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions," Mr Blix said. He attacked reasoning by Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, the British government's top legal adviser, that UN resolution 1441 authorized the use of force because it revived earlier resolutions passed after the first Gulf war.

Mr Blix said that while it was possible to argue Iraq had violated UN resolutions adopted since 1991, the "ownership" of the resolutions rested with the entire 15-member UN Security Council and not with individual states.

"It's the Security Council that is party to the cease-fire (after the first Gulf war), not the UK and US individually, and therefore it is the Council that has ownership of the cease-fire, in my interpretation."

Asked whether in his view a second resolution authorizing force should have been adopted, Mr Blix replied: "Oh yes." He dismissed calls for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to resign or apologize over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But Mr Blix suggested that Mr Blair may have been wounded politically. -AFP