Former chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix on Wednesday slammed the British government's dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), claiming that it was "hyped".

"I think they hyped the report, evidently," Blix said in an interview with the BBC.

"I think it was a spin that was not acceptable. They put exclamation marks where there had been question marks and I think that is hyping, a spin, that leads the public to the wrong conclusions," Blix said.

Blix's comments comes as an independent inquiry into the British government's pre-war Iraq intelligence published its report.

According to the report by Lord Butler, who headed the inquiry,the intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons used by the British government before the Iraq war was at times "seriously flawed" and"unreliable".

However, the report cleared British Prime Minister Tony Blair of responsibility for the failings.

Blix last week told the British Financial Times newspaper that he had told the Butler inquiry that the intelligence used by Britain and the United States to underpin their justification for war on Iraq was inaccurate and overstated the threat of WMD.

The British government did not exercise sufficient critical judgement in analyzing and presenting the intelligence it was given, Blix told the paper.

Sourcve: Xinhua