UNITED NATIONS, March 16: Former UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said on Monday that US President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had lost credibility.

"The world isn't safer now that Saddam Hussein is out of power" and it was clear 10 months ago that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "I think they had a set mind," Mr Blix said on the NBC News programme "Today" as he began a ten-day American tour to promote his book "Disarming Iraq," in the week marking the first anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

"They wanted to come to the conclusion that there were weapons," he said. "Like the former days of the witch hunt, they are convinced that they exist, and if you see a black cat, well, that's evidence of the witch."

In an address to the faculty and students at the New York University later on Monday night, Mr Blix said he did not share the Bush administrations' view that the war had made the world a safer place.

"Sorry to say it doesn't look that way," he said. "If the aim was to send a signal to terrorists that we are determined to take you on, that has not succeeded."

Mr Blix said the United States should have known months ago that there were no weapons to be found. "By May I knew there was nothing because the Americans had interrogated so many Iraqis by then and even offered money and still they found nothing."