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Iraq a policy disaster: U.K.

Hasan Suroor

U.S. General sets time-frame

LONDON: In the most stark official assessment yet of the situation in Iraq, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett on Tuesday admitted that it could be judged as a foreign policy "disaster.''

Asked in a BBC interview if historians would judge the Iraq invasion as a "disaster'', she said: "Yes, they may.'' She then hastened to add: "Then again, they may not.''

Ms. Beckett also did not rule out the possibility of a break-up of Iraq along ethnic lines saying this could happen if that was what Iraqis eventually preferred.

"They have had enough of people from outside handing down arbitrary boundaries and arbitrary decisions,'' she said adding that if Iraqis decided that a partition of the country into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish regions was "workable'' it was a matter for them.

Ms. Beckett's remarks came amid growing pressure on Prime Minister Tony Blair to pull out British troops from Iraq following a warning by the army chief General Richard Dannatt that continued presence of foreign troops there was "exacerbating'' violent extremism both at home and abroad.

A new poll on Tuesday showed that an overwhelming majority of people wanted British forces out of Iraq by year-end. A whopping 61 per cent of voters, according to a Guardian/ICM poll, said British troops must leave Iraq "even if they have not completed their mission and Washington wants them to stay.''

In what is seen as a hardening of public opinion against continued occupation of Iraq, only 30 per cent agree with Mr. Blair that troops must stay on in Iraq until the job is done.

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