Cannot remove UVs from an imported .3ds mesh with "clear seams"

Hi, I have a UV unwrapping question and I hope this is the right sub forum to post this in.

(I’m using Blender 2.5 for this, as it is a character model originally used in a game called ‘Overgrowth’ and supposedly the game model import process doesn’t work with the current version of Blender.)

I thought one could remove the UVs of an object by selecting all of it in edit mode, then removing seams with “clear seams”, then defining new seams and unwrapping the object. But this method fails to remove the UVs on this mesh, as when I unwrap the mesh I have done this to and re-select it, the old UVs appear again in the UV/Image editor window.

Am I missing a basic step here? Is this a known flaw from importing .3ds files into blender?

Just delete UV map in Object Data panel UV Texture: click on “-”.

cool I found it, thanks!