Beckett backs Iraq policy review

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The UK foreign secretary has said the time is right to reassess Iraq policy, but added the country does not have to slide into "gloom and disaster".

Margaret Beckett criticised "incessant harping" about the worst, telling the BBC it was "absolutely possible" that Iraq could become stable and unified.

However it was right to reassess policy although there was no "magic formula".

She added that the future of Iraq was "in large part" in Iraqis', and its neighbouring countries', hands.

A report published last week by the US cross-party Iraq Study Group said the situation there was "grave" and "deteriorating".

Baghdad attacks

It recommended the US should talk to Iran and Syria, while shifting its own efforts towards the support and training of the Iraqi armed forces.

Asked whether she agreed with the group's findings, she said: "Certainly nobody disputes... that the position is grave and that there are times when it is clearly deteriorating and then there are times when it improves.

"We're certainly going through one of those bad times at present and no-one is disputing that at all."

I know that all the talk is of division, of civil war of the splitting up of Iraq. There's nothing in the present circumstances that actually mean that that has to be the outcome Margaret Beckett

She said the situation in Baghdad, where there were up to 70 attacks a day, was "unquestionably extremely difficult".

But about 80% of the violence in Iraq was limited to four of 18 provinces, she said, and in many parts of Basra things were improving.

"I know that all the talk is of division, of civil war of the splitting up of Iraq. There's nothing in the present circumstances that actually mean that that has to be the outcome," she said.

She said with political will in Iraq and among its neighbours and a determination to avoid the "potential worst scenario" from the ISG report it was possible Iraq could be a stable, unified democracy.

Calls for update

"The future of Iraq is in large part in their hands it is also in the hands of some of their neighbours.

"We are doing what we can to make sure the outcome is the better one for the people of Iraq and not the potential gloom and disaster that could, if you were right, not be a very good outcome for them," she said.

Referring to comments made by outgoing UN secretary general Kofi Annan, that the situation in Iraq was now worse than civil war, she said he had "spoken in strong terms on the brink of his retirement."

"He's a man of wisdom and great experience and he clearly feels very passionately about this issue," she said.

But she said while she respected his opinions, she was more interested in helping to improve the situation than "endless repetition" about war critics being "right from the beginning".

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague has called for an update from the government in the wake of the US report, which recommended US combat forces be withdrawn by 2008.

Mrs Beckett said the prime minister would reflect on the ISG report and comment upon it in his own time.