WASHINGTON, April 18: The Iraq invasion and the feelings it has stirred in the Muslim world has forced the cancellation or postponement of hundreds of research trips by US scholars to the region, the New York Times said on Friday.

Experts told the daily it is the greatest interruption of overseas study since World War II.

In some cases, academic institutions or researchers themselves have cancelled trips in response to US State Department warnings of danger, the Times reported. In other cases, host countries have denied them study permits.

“I can’t remember when research has been disrupted across such a wide region,” Elizabeth Stone, who teaches at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, told the daily. “The war has left a very wide footprint.”

She said she was forced to cancel a trip to excavate a 2,600-year-old city in eastern Turkey.

Many professors with long experience in the region said they fear it could be years before hostilities subside enough to allow US researchers to resume their studies.

“Only in the best case will conditions for research ever be as good as in the past,” said Philip Gingerich, a paleontologist who was refused a permit this year to study ancient whale skeletons in Pakistan.—AFP