Iraq Worse off Under US: Annan

"If I were an average Iraqi obviously I would make the same Comparison," Annan said. (Reuters)

"If I were an average Iraqi obviously I would make the same comparison," said Kofi Annan in an interview with the BBC, excerpts of which were published by The Independent, Monday, December 4.

"They had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying, 'Am I going to see my child again?"

Annan said the invasion opened the gates of hell in Iraq, fanning the flames of the country's sectarian conflict that is "much worse" than recent civil wars in the region.

"A few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war," Ghanaian Annan told the BBC in the interview to mark his departure from office.

"This is much worse."

A recent UN report showed that the civilian death climbed day in and day out, and the soaring toll was largely blamed on sectarian violence.

UN and Iraqi medical sources have estimated that more than a 100 people are being killed every day in the a Shiite-Sunni conflict, described now by leading US media outlets as a civil war in the broad sense of the word.

Unable

Annan also questioned the ability of the current Iraqi government to put a stop to the bloody sectarian killings in Iraq.

"The Iraqi government has not been able to bring the violence under control," Annan went on in his hardest-hitting assessment ever. 

Annan suggested last week that the international community hold a broad-based international peace conference on the situation in Iraq.

But Iraqi leaders, chiefly President Jalal Talabani, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari and influential Shiite cleric Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, have rejected Annan's initiative.

A classified memo by US President George Bush's National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, revealed last month, cast doubts on the true intentions and ability of incumbent Iraqi Premier Nuri al-Maliki to rein in raging sectarian violence.

After forming a unity government in May, al-Maliki, a Shiite, vowed to dismantle militias to help restore security to the war-torn country.

But since then, no action has been taken.

Unpreventable

Annan, whose 10 year stint as secretary general ends on December 31, expressed his regret for being unable to prevent the war.   

"I really believed that we could have stopped the war and that if we had worked a bit harder, given the inspectors a bit more time, we could have."

The US-led invasion of Iraq was not approved by the UN Security Council and Annan had called it "illegal". It was launched on US intelligence claims that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, which proved later unauthentic.

The UN chief remarks came a week after another stark assessment when he said the US is actually "trapped" in Iraq.

Annan warned that with the unwinnable security situation, the country will not find a way out of the current state of anarchy.

"The society needs security and a secure environment for it to get on," Annan added.

"Without security not much can be done -- not recovery or reconstruction."

Annan said last month American troops were facing a no-win situation is Iraq with a little hope of a dignified way out.

"The US is in a way trapped in Iraq, trapped in the sense that it cannot stay and it cannot leave," Annan said.

His statement came a few days after chief US ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted that the Iraq war had been a "disaster".

Now the United States is reviewing its entire policy in the occupied country, especially after President George W. Bush has acknowledged that the Iraq war cost his Republican party dearly in the congressional mid-term elections.

According to a leaked memo, Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, surprisingly, had urged a major change in the US strategy in Iraq, saying the current one was not working well enough.

A bipartisan ad hoc committee, the Iraq Study Group led by former US Secretary of State James Baker, will make public its recommendations to improve the situation in Iraq on Wednesday, December 6.