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Kissinger: Iraq victory not on
19/11/2006 14:21 - (SA)
London - Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, in a television interview broadcast on Sunday.
In a wide ranging interview on BBC television Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the US government must enter dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbours - including Iran - if any progress is to be made in the region.
"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 on the BBC's Sunday AM program.
But Kissinger warned against a rapid withdrawal of troops, saying it could lead to "disastrous consequences," destabilising Iraq's neighbours and causing a long lasting conflict.
"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 Shiite populations - will be, in all likelihood, destabilised," he said.
Kissinger has been advising US President George W Bush on Iraq.
"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."
Kissinger whose views have also been sought by the Iraqi Study Group, led by former secretary of state James Baker III, 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 said that the process would have to include Iran, with which the United States must enter into dialogue.
Asked if it was time for Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair to change course, he responded: "I think we have to redefine the course, but I don't think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal.
"The art of leadership will be to find a course that will protect our values, our interests and the possibility of some progress in the area without simply blindly following a strategy which - however reasonable it was when adopted - has failed to achieve the objectives that were defined in a timeframe that our political processes would support."
- AP
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