RIYADH, Nov 2: Iraq is heading towards division along sectarian and ethnic lines and there exist little opportunity to avoid its possible disintegration, said Nawaf Obaid, managing director of the Riyadh-based independent Saudi National Security Assessment Project.

The worst fear of the Arabs, expressed before war on Baghdad was unleashed, seems to be coming true, he said at a presentation at a two-day conference on US-Arab relations in Washington.

"It is already a lost battle," said Nawaf, who is also an adviser to the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

The question in Iraq is not "if the US succeeds - it has failed by every single measure that you can think of," said Obaid. "The failure is only compounded by the fact that we just don't know what the endgame is."

He projected the violence-ravaged nation's "dire" plight, adding that the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq showed no sign of abating, that conditions were being exacerbated by Iranian interference and questioned whether the Iraqi government could bring stability.

"All indications point to a current state of civil war and the disintegration of the Iraqi state," Obaid said, adding that Saudi leaders had been trying to counter what he said were US misconceptions about Iraq. "Unfortunately the assessment is very dire, and we don't think there is a possibility now to avoid the potential disintegration of Iraq."

The presentation claimed that there had been large-scale "infiltration, funding and arming" of Shia militias by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Shia officers with ties to the guard and Iran's Ministry of Intelligence had also infiltrated newly-created Iraqi army and police forces, the report said.

Earlier, the Saudi ambassador in Washington Prince Turki warned the US against a hasty retreat from Iraq, cautioning a formal decision to split the country on ethnic lines would unleash massive ethnic cleansing.

"To envision that you can divide Iraq into three parts is to envision ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, sectarian killing on a massive scale and the uprooting of families," he said.