BLACKBURN, April 1: The United States has made mistakes in Iraq, but it was not a mistake to overthrow Saddam Hussein or ‘unleash the forces of democracy in the Middle East’, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Saturday in an interview with the BBC.

Going back to her acknowledgement the previous day that the United States had made ‘thousands’ of tactical errors in Iraq, Ms Rice insisted that these errors did not concern the strategic objectives which Washington had set itself when it intervened in Iraq.

“Of course there have been mistakes. But it was not a mistake to overthrow Saddam Hussein; it was not a mistake to unleash the forces of democracy in the Middle East.

“It’s not at gunpoint that democracy is taking place in Iraq — at gunpoint Saddam Hussein was taken out of power but Iraqis did not go to the polls at gunpoint,” she said, while conceding “the birth of democracy is sometimes difficult.”

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who has been playing host to Ms Rice in his Blackburn constituency since Friday, shared her analysis of the situation in Iraq.

“Not everything worked out afterwards as anticipated but I am absolutely clear that without that military action you would never have been able to unleash the forces of democracy not only in Iraq but ... across the Middle East,” he told the BBC. —AFP