UK urged to redefine objectives in Iraq

Iraq is the most pressing and serious issue facing Britain's new prime minister Gordon Brown, and his government urgently needs to review its policy following four years of disastrous war, according to an independent commission.

"There are no easy options left in Iraq, only painful ones," the all-party Iraq Commission said. It also reminded Brown's government and the UK has "a legal and moral responsibility to Iraq" after the 2003 joint invasion with the US.

"Under Resolution 1483 and subsequent UN resolutions, the British hold shared responsibility in international law for what happened during and after the invasion of Iraq," it said in a 119- page report published this weekend.

It pointed out that the US-UK coalition achieved the ending of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime in Iraq but said the "over ambitious vision of the coalition can no longer be achieved in Iraq." "The UK government needs, therefore to redefine its objectives," said the commission, set up by the London-based Foreign Policy Centre with the support of Channel 4 television.

"We thought we were going to achieve something good, that has not happened. It's actually time for change. It is time to do something about it," it said quoting the words of Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the former British Special Representative in Iraq.

The report recommended that the UK government's aims for Iraq should include to "preserve and underpin the territorial integrity of the Iraqi state" and support a strongly federal internal structure.

Like a similar review carried out in the US last December, it suggested that "constructive engagement" should be promoted with Iraq's neighbors to achieve such aims.

On the need to bring Iran into the process, the commission concluded that Tehran "could cooperate if they saw such an international effort as a means of regionalizing the issues and ultimately leading to the complete withdrawal" of US-UK forces.

The UK was seen as having "an important role to play as the only permanent member of the UN Security Council which is also a member of the coalition, a member of the EU and has diplomatic relations with all of Iraq's neighbors." "The UK should undertake intensive bilateral diplomacy with all regional actors and interested international parties, especially with those who do not have formal diplomatic relations with the US, to support such a political process," the report urged.

It also said that Brown's government should make clear both privately to the US and publicly that it believes that this course of action both reflects British and wider interests and is the most likely to reduce the violence.

The commission ruled out that there should be an immediate withdrawal of troops, believing that this could lead to even further violence, but suggested that UK forces should refrain from combat operations and focus on training Iraqi soldiers.