LONDON, April 14: Britain and the United States are divided on much of their Iraq policy, a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad told a British newspaper on Wednesday.

"The US and British were working at cross purposes basically because of disputes over how realistic was the pursuit of democracy," Michael Rubin, who resigned from the Pentagon 10 days ago after returning from Iraq, told The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

He also claimed that several US officials had been shocked by British attempts to capitalize on their presence in southern Iraq to foster ties between the CPA and Iran. "That is a major policy decision for the White House," he told the newspaper.

"It should not be made in Basra (the centre of the British-controlled zone in southern Iraq)," he said. "We got a sense that Britons were using the CPA as an outreach to Iran, which was not the Americans' intention."

Concerns have been raised by senior British politicians and former politicians that London does not have a big enough voice within the CPA which is under the control of the US Administrator Paul Bremer. British representation in the CPA was somewhat weakened with the departure of Sir Jeremy Green stock, a former British UN ambassador at the end of March. -AFP