Major Dismisses War Goal

Updated:14:04, Friday March 28, 2003

Former Prime Minister John Major says the imposition of a Western-style democracy In Iraq would be nearly impossible. 

John Major

"I have never seen Iraq as a democracy of the Western sort," he said in a speech in Hong Kong.

"It is going to be very difficult to install a government. The thought of a grand coalition between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds is so improbable as to be dismissed as absurd almost from the outset," Major said.

In 1991 it was Major who sent British troops to the Gulf after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Minority

His comments contrast with those of President George W. Bush, who has said that imposing a pluralistic democracy is part of the aims of the current war against Iraq.

President Saddam Hussein, from Iraq's Sunni minority, has been in conflict with the Kurds for much of his rule and has violently suppressed uprisings among the Shia.

Mr Major said a Western-style democracy in Iraq would entail a predominance of Shia Muslims in a future government, leading to the possibility of Iraq and neighbouring Iran collaborating and "looking at the future together".

He said such a collaboration would most likely be viewed with suspicion by neighbours such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, both of which have turbulent Shia minorities.

'Reckless'

Mr Major said assuming that a Shia-dominated Iraq located next to a mostly-Shia Iran would lead to a moderating influence across the Middle East was a "reckless way to proceed."

Another voice against the current action in Iraq comes from none other that President Bush's father, George Bush Senior.

"We should not march into Baghdad," he wrote in his 1998 book, A World Transformed.

"To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero...assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war.

"It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."