Prime Minister al-Maliki’s advisor analyses the enormous mistakes made by the US in its management of post-Saddam Iraq. Yet, he acknowledges the US remains the only power that can stabilise the country and demands that it work for the establishment of a federal system.

Washington (AsiaNews/Agencies) – US efforts to create a democracy in Iraq were disastrous, yet the United States remains the only power capable of rectifying the situation, this according to Ali Allawi, an advisor to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a former Shia member of the previous interim government in his newly published book, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace.

Speaking at Washington's National Press Club, Mr Allawi, whose is the cousin of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, made an appeal for a necessarily federal solution to Iraq’s woes. Only then will the US be able to leave the country in favour of an international force that would be responsible for the stabilisation of the new federal system.

He slammed what he terms the "monumental ignorance" of those in the United States who managed post-Saddam Iraq. Disbanding Iraq's armed forces, letting Saddam’s gangs take over commerce, purging tens of thousands of Ba’athists from government, schools and public institutions, thus depriving the country of experts at a crucial moment in the country’s history, are among the errors that can be laid on the doorstep of L. Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)

Still for Allawi the United States is the only power capable of helping to foster conditions in Iraq that will lead to a better future. In his opinion Washington should accelerate the setting up of a federal system in Iraq, urging that federalism be "underwritten by an international treaty that would include regional powers".

"US troops would then be replaced by an international force to stabilise the new federal system," he said.

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