IRAQ - Baghdad Warns Against Early US Pull-Out.

The anti-war sentiment in Washington has accelerated enough for Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari to warn on July 9 that a premature US pull-out would lead to civil war, regional conflagration and a failed state. US Ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker urged policy makers in Washington to give "some very, very serious thought" to the consequences that could follow an early reduction of US troops in Iraq, warning of a surge in sectarian killings in which civilians "by the thousands" could die.

The New York Times on July 9 quoted Ambassador Crocker as saying: "You can't build a whole policy on a fear of a negative, but, boy, you've really got to account for it". Setting out what he said was not a policy prescription but a review of issues which needed to be weighed, the ambassador compared Iraq's current violence to the early scenes of a movie, suggesting that those urging an early troop withdrawal might have under-estimated the potential for much greater killing.

Crocker said: "In the States, it's like we're in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we're done here and the credits come up and the lights come on and we leave the theater and go on to something else. Whereas out here, you're just getting into the first reel of five reels, and as ugly as the first reel has been, the other four-and-a-half are going to be way, way worse".

Crocker continued: "And you've got to give some very, very serious thought to ways it could be worse," including "sectarian violence on a level we just haven't seen before" which could escalate if American troops are not available to restrain the killing. He added: "You have to look at what the consequences would be, and you look at those who say we could have bases elsewhere in the country - well yes, we could, but we would have the prospect of American forces looking on while civilians by the thousands were slaughtered. Not a pretty prospect".

Crocker, who has spent most of his 36-year diplomatic career in the Arab world, including a posting to Lebanon during which he survived the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in 1982, emphasised what he called "the almost infinite complexity" of the situation in Iraq, and the hard choices facing the US. But the crux of his remarks was a view that Gen. Petraeus has pressed in behind-doors briefings for senators in Washington: that while the US faces a high price for staying in Iraq, with mounting American casualties and a bill which is already over $500 bn, the price for leaving could be high, too.

Crocker spoke of the pressures the September deadline has imposed on him and Gen. Petraeus to come up with what he described as "the best assessment we can" and "the most honest" to Congress in September. He compared their situation to the one faced by Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and Gen. Creighton Abrams Jr., the two top Americans in Vietnam when the decisions which led to the US withdrawal from that war were made nearly 40 years ago. "That's the only kind of situation that I can think of in which something like this might have arisen", Crocker said, referring to the burden of expectation he and Petraeus now face.

In setting out what he called "the kind of things you have to think about" if American troops are withdrawn, the ambassador projected several possibilities. He said these included a resurgence by insurgents linked to al-Qaeda, which he said had been "pretty hard-pressed of late" by the "surge" of an additional 30,000 US troops; the risk that Iraq's 350,000-strong security forces would "completely collapse" under sectarian pressures, disintegrating into militias; and the spectre of interference amid the chaos by Iran, neighbouring Sunni Arab states and Turkey.

Crocker added: "I'm not saying any of this is going to happen or is likely to happen, but it's the kind of things you've got to think about. The movie will go on with us, or without us. So what are the actors likely to do in our absence under the conditions as we can best see them?"

Crocker said his experience in Lebanon in the early 1980s was that "generally when you try to think about future scenarios, your main mistake is often a failure of imagination", and that he could not have predicted the violence which came in 1982, including the attacks which killed hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Beirut, and the devastating truck bombings of the US Embassy and the American marine barracks.

"All those things exceeded my imagination, and I'm sure that what will happen here will exceed my imagination", Crocker said, adding: "But these things have to be thought about, and they are serious".