David Cameron : Iraq deteriorating security situation casts dark shadow
Iraq-UK, Politics, 12/2/2006

Britain's main opposition leader has returned from his first visit to Iraq calling for an honest and realistic reappraisal of UK and US policy, including the setting up of an International Contract Group to include the country's neighbors.

"The deteriorating security situation casts a dark shadow over everything else. We owe it to our troops, just as we owe it to the people of Iraq, to be clear about the direction we should now take in Iraq," Conservative leader David Cameron said.

In an article for the Times newspaper Friday, Cameron warned that there was "no purely military solution" to Iraq's problems, while putting forward four recommendations.

"First, we must be much more candid about the situation we are now dealing with," he said. "People want to be told the truth - good or bad. The security situation is dire, and there is no point in hiding it." Cameron, who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime, said that the British government also needed to be "more practical in the scale of our ambition in Iraq." "It is just not realistic to talk of establishing a fully functioning Iraqi version of a liberal democracy. That process will take many years. Iraqis are crying out for a government that can give them security before anything else," he warned.

His recommendation, which comes ahead of next week's publication of recommendations by the Iraq Study Group in Washington, further proposed establishing an international Contact Group for Iraq, bringing in Security Council members and Iraq's neighbors.

"This should not be a talking shop. Nor should it attempt to impose an outside solution on the Iraqis. To succeed, it will need to have Iraqi leadership prominent throughout," the Tory leader said.

He said lasting peace will depend on an internal political settlement between Arab and Kurd, between Sunni and Shia and "that in turn will require the support of Iraq's neighbors." "To achieve this, Iraq will require a great deal of external political support, both from its neighbors and the wider international community," Cameron told the paper.

This, he emphasized, will require "both honesty and humility on our part: honesty about the situation as it really is; humility in acknowledging the mistakes that have been made." This is why he was calling for a Contact Group to be created, he said.

On Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott also gave the clearest indication to date that the British government may now be prepared to support the setting up of an international contact group.

The situation was difficult but if discussions are encouraging such developments, "I am sure that we would welcome them," Prescott told parliament, when challenged by the Conservative's shadow foreign secretary William Hague, who accompanied Cameron to Iraq.

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