The allegations by US officials that his team deliberately suppressed information on an Iraqi unmanned drone plane and a cluster bomb in its report on Iraq's weapons were intended to discredit inspectors, Blix said in an interview with the BBC.

"Thereby they tried to hurt us a bit and say we'd suppressed this," Blix said.

"At that time the US was very eager to sway the votes of the Security Council and they felt that stories about these things would be useful to have and they let it out," said Blix, who was due to address the UN Security Council in New York in a closed session later in the day on his readiness to send inspectors back to Iraq.

He also questioned the ability of British and American intelligence agencies to spot "fakes" such as a report that Iraq had imported tons of raw uranium.

Blix's comments came as he faced the US opposition to his wish for UN inspectors to return to Iraq to complete the inspection work.

US-led forces launched military attack against Iraq on March 20, accusing Baghdad of hiding its banned arms from UN inspectors. However, coalition troops in Iraq have so far failed to find nuclear, chemical or biological arms.

Earlier reports said the US had already sent a 1000-strong expert group to Iraq with the aim of finding the country's banned weapons.

Some US officials argued they wanted to send former UN inspectors from the United States, Britain and Australia to verify any discovery of banned weapons in Iraq.

But most members of the UN Security Council, including US staunch ally Britain, believed that any weapons of mass destruction found by the US military must be verified by the UN inspectors in compliance with UN resolutions before sanctions on Iraq could be lifted.

(Xinhua News Agency April 23, 2003)