In a staggering disclosure Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK's former envoy to Iraq, says the war in Iraq will be judged a complete failure if the situation on the ground does not improve.
"If after a considerable period with us still being engaged [in Iraq] the situation does not improve, I think people will just come to the objective judgment that the whole thing was just not worth what we - the US and the UK - put into it," Greenstock told Emerging Markets in an exclusive interview.
His comments come as the country suffers intensifying violence that has killed dozens of people in the past two days, and as other senior government officials on both sides of the Atlantic, including US Secretary of State Colin Powell, are voicing concerns over the mounting violence.
Greenstock, who served six months as UK's top administrator in Iraq until his departure in March, believes that in general, people in Iraq are not better off now than before the war.
"They're not necessarily better off in terms of law and order in a community sense. They're not yet better off in an economic sense, but they sense the change in terms of their growing capacity for freedom of choice. But the choices truly available to them are too few," he says.
His views stand in stark contrast to those of Adil Abdul Mahdi, Iraq's finance minister, who told Emerging Markets that he believes the media has exaggerated the security situation in Iraq. "I don't agree that the situation is worse. The situation is much better [than before the war] but the media only pays attention to a one-sided image. That's why people outside think the situation is worse," he insisted. "The average level of living [standards] is much, much better than before."
Greenstock agrees with Abdul Mahdi on another point, however: that one of the most important ways to help improve the living standards of ordinary Iraqis is to redouble international efforts to revive the country's economy - most crucially by rescheduling a significant part of Iraq's outstanding $120 billion in debt. As reported yesterday, Jean-Pierre Jouyet told Emerging Markets that a Paris Club deal is likely by the end of this year, notwithstanding the differences of opinion among creditors over the extent of a possible debt write-off.
But Greenstock urges creditors to accept that Iraq's capacity for repayment, though severely constrained, must be properly assessed: "I'm afraid that creditors have got themselves some bad debt here and they've got to realize that," he says. "The debt is so large that it cannot be repaid in any meaningful or economically sensible way. It was incurred by a regime that is no longer represented in the minds of Iraqis in terms of its commitments and its promises."
He argues, however, that for the sake of international financial stability, Iraq must repay part of its debt. "I would have said that for the sake of discipline and order there should be a certain percentage paid back, and Iraq has got a large economic potential and must recognize that it got itself into a mess, and pay some of it back," he says. "But it's got to be in my view a number much lower than 50%."