BRUSSELS, March 18: The EU will find it “very difficult” to help in rebuilding Iraq after a war without a UN mandate, European Commission President Romano Prodi said on Tuesday, cited by a spokesman.

“Mr. Prodi thinks it will very difficult for the EU and its member states to participate in the post-war reconstruction efforts,” said the spokesman, expressing regret at “unilateral” decisions.

EU external relations commissioner Chris Patten warned last week that it would be more difficult to persuade anti-war EU countries to fund post-war reconstruction if the conflict had no UN backing.

Prodi said his comments did not mean that the EU, which is deeply divided over the looming US-led war, had already decided it would not contribute to post-war rebuilding.

But the precondition for any such support would be that the United Nations take its full responsibility in managing the post-war situation, said the spokesman.

Prodi, who heads the Brussels-based EU executive, added that there was an “extraordinary” level of public opposition to the war. “The differences are between governments and not between people,” he said.

“We have never been in such a situation,” he said.

Patten told the European parliament last Wednesday: “It will be that much more difficult for the EU to cooperate fully and on a large scale — also in the longer-term reconstruc-tion process — if events unfold without proper UN cover,” he said.

On Tuesday Patten said the failure of the EU and the UN to unite over Iraq was “regrettable”.

“But the challenge for us now is to try to minimise the damage to the European Union and to minimise the damage to both our relationship with the United States and our relationship with the Islamic world,” he said.

Prodi’s spokesman meanwhile acknowledged that the Iraqi crisis “underlines the clear weaknesses” in the EU’s common foreign and security policy.

“It is time to draw the lessons of this crisis to rebuild European unity in these questions,” he said.

He was speaking ahead of an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, preceded by a meeting of EU foreign ministers that started on Tuesday. —AFP