LONDON: The former foreign secretary Jack Straw has described the situation in Iraq as “dire”, blaming mistakes made by the US for the escalating crisis. Mr Straw — now the Leader of the Commons — was foreign secretary at the time of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and staunchly backed Tony Blair’s decision to join the operation.

“The current situation is dire,” he said on BBC1’s Question Time last night. “I think many mistakes were made after the military action — there is no question about it — by the United States administration. “Why? Because they failed to follow the lead of secretary [of state Colin] Powell. The state department had put in a huge amount of effort to ensure there was a proper civilian administration.”

Mr Straw said he had previously expressed the view that the situation in Iraq was unsatisfactory. “I certainly said there were mistakes made,” he added. Although ministers and officials in both Washington and London have accepted that the situation in Iraq is difficult, Mr Straw’s comments were unusually forthright.

They came as the death toll from violence continued to climb. On Saturday, the start of the holy month of Ramazan, Sunni extremists killed at least 37 Shias, many of them women, in a bomb attack in the Sadr City area of eastern Baghdad.

Despite the new Iraqi government’s pledge to crack down on the violence sweeping the country, bombings and kidnappings have become almost daily occurrences. In the past two months, the death toll recorded by the UN has reached 6,500 — 100 fatalities a day — with the vast majority happening in Baghdad. Speaking at the Labour conference earlier this week, Mr Blair said Britain should not retreat from its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and should maintain its fight against international terrorism.

“If we retreat now, hand Iraq over to Al Qaeda and sectarian death squads and Afghanistan back to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, we won’t be safer,” he said. “We will be committing a craven act of surrender that will put our future security in the deepest peril.” A total of 118 British troops have died in Iraq since the conflict began.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service