Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said today in a bleak assessment of prospects for the region.
But he also warned against rapid withdrawal of allied troops, which he said could lead to "disastrous consequences", destabilising Iraq's neighbours and causing a conflict which could last many years.
Dr Kissinger called for an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Iraq's neighbours and regional powers like India and Pakistan to work out a way forward for the region.
And he said that the process would have to include Iran, with which the USA must enter into dialogue.
Dr Kissinger — who served as Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations from 1973-77 — told BBC1's Sunday AM that the goal of establishing an Iraqi Government capable of quelling violent insurgency was no longer attainable within a time-frame that would be acceptable to British and American voters.
"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi Government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he said.
But he warned that this did not mean that US and UK troops should be pulled out of Iraq.
"If you withdraw all the forces without any international understanding and without any even partial solution of some of the problems, civil war in Iraq will take on even more violent forms and achieve dimensions that are probably exceeding those that brought us into Yugoslavia with military force," he said.
"All the surrounding countries — especially those that have large Shia populations — will be, in all likelihood, destabilised.
"So I think a dramatic collapse of Iraq — whatever we think about how the situation was created — would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region."
PA