This article was first published in the Independent on Sunday.

Christmas could give us time to reflect and the New Year the opportunity to determine, how we might move forward in Iraq and the Middle East and correct the terrible mistakes that have been made in 2003.

Saddam Hussein has been found in a hole in the ground. This may have brought temporary comfort to Bush and Blair. But the state in which he was found demonstrates very clearly that he was not organising the resistance. The challenge now is to bring him to trial for all the evil he has done. This should include the war on Iran which would expose the support he received from the US and the UK as well as the monstrous cruelty inflicted on his people. Already, there is doubt that the trial will be properly handled. The Coalition Provisional Authority – which does not take big decisions without US guidance – has decided that the crimes of the Saddam years should be handled by and Iraqi court without international engagement. This is surely a mistake. Getting the trial right will be crucial for the future of Iraq. All the injustice must be exposed and held to account. In Bosnia and Rwanda we have seen how important it is for people to see the evidence of former dictators being held accountable for their crimes. The best available model is surely that of Sierra Leone – which means a court established under UN authority, with international support but established within the country in which the atrocities were committed. The danger is that we get CPA/US shaped court that fails to live up to the historical challenge and leaves controversy and division rather than historical healing.

But is also likely that the capture of Saddam will not bring the resistance to an end. The Iraqi people are a proud nationalistic people. Those who worked for the UN Oil for Food Programme understood that. It is clear that the core of the resistance came from the Sunni heartlands – the group that did well under Saddam and from which much of the leadership of the army and security services were drawn. They are joined by a growing number of Iraqis who feel humiliated or are seeking revenge for the suffering of their families. On top of this, we now have foreign fighters. There was no link of any kind between Iraq and Al Qaeda before the war. There is now - the suicide bombs are evidence of this. And the Middle East is crowded with angry young people who believe the US has propped up dictatorships, misused the regions oil and supported Israel in its constant breaches of international law and therefore carries major responsibility for the oppression and suffering of the Palestinian people. Most of these young people would not support the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden. But they may well be willing to link with the loose network that is Al Qaeda in order to take the opportunity to join in the resistance to American occupation.

The Shia people of Iraq, who suffered terribly under Saddam Hussein have held back in joining the resistance. Their leadership is very clear about how much they have to gain from democracy. But the question here is does the US – accompanied by the UK as the faithful poodle – really want democracy in Iraq? This would almost certainly mean an anti-American, anti Israeli government with half the world's oil reserves. The US wants an exit strategy but they also want a pro-American government in Iraq.

Both may not be possible. A sustainable exit strategy requires a US President who understands that he is unlikely to be able to exit from Iraq or reunite the world in opposition to Al Qaeda without a settlement of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. And the world fact that if the Israeli wall continues to be built, the two state solution will evaporate and we are in danger of seeing bloodshed and suffering from generation to generation. Given that the four former heads of the Israeli security services understand this, it ought to be possible for an American President to be brought to understand this.

There may therefore be some optimism in the dark clouds that hang over the Middle East and the world. If the only exit strategy from Iraq is a just settlement of Israel/Palestine, then part of the package would be an agreement that all WMD – including Israel's considerable nuclear capacity – should be removed from the region. Such a settlement would provide a real opportunity for democracy and development to spread across the region. It would also mean that the neo-conservatives would be trounced for the terrible errors they have made and the US would understand that even with all its military and economic power, it has as much need of international co-operation and an effective UN system as do the poor and oppressed.

The question is how will we get to this beneficial solution? I am afraid that the consequences of the errors Tony Blair has made in his handling of the Iraq crisis mean that as long as he is there, we will have little influence and he will continue to be taken for granted by the US and written off by Europe. But the forces of history will continue and probably will grow. Thus it will continue to cost American lives and even larger number of terrible injuries and mental breakdown – the numbers of which are being kept very quiet. If the Shia join the resistance, the situation will become very much more difficult in the South and for our own soldiers. And if all of this goes on, the costs will continue to cause resentment in the US – the $87 billion paid, which caused trouble with Congress, was for less than one year in Iraq. And continuing expenditure in Iraq whilst our public finances are under pressure could see the UK public and parliament begin to chafe at the growing costs to our own treasury. The best scenario would be Dean elected President in 2004 with Wesley Clarke as his deputy. This would mean that the American people would have voted for the fastest possible exit from Iraq and a reversal of the tax cuts to fund a comprehensive health-care system. By then – if the resistance continues – the only way out will be to settle Palestine and to internationalise Iraq. This would mean asking the UN to do what it should have been asked by the Security Council Resolution pass at the end of the war. A special representative of the Security General should be given authority to consult the Iraqis about the best possible way of selecting an interim government and a procedure to draw up a constitution and get to elections. US and UK troops would be drawn down and international – probably Blue Helmeted – troops take over whilst urgent action is taken to help Iraq build its own army and police force. The IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and UN system would then provide support to the interim Iraqi government in carrying forward economic and social reform. In these circumstances Pakistan, Jordan and other Arab and Muslim countries would be likely to be willing to provide forces to help the people of Iraq stabilise their country and coalition forces could leave.

The less optimistic scenario for 2004 is that Bush is elected and Blair limps on. In this case I fear the resistance will strengthen, Al Qaeda will strengthen, bitterness and suffering will grow and the multilateral system remains weak. But I cannot see how the present strategy can work and therefore I hope and pray that either through the ballot box or an intelligent understanding of their self-interest, US policy will change and the world move forward in 2004.

See article below which makes clear that Libya’s disarmament is not a result of the Iraq war. 

The Iraq war did not force Gadaffi's hand:

MARTIN INDYK

Embarrassed, perhaps, by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, President George W. Bush is apparently trying to find another WMD-related justification for his pre-emptive war on Iraq. Thus, Bush administration spokesmen have been quick to portray Libya's December decision to abandon WMD programmes as the direct result of the US invasion of Iraq - or, as Mr Bush himself put it in his State of the Union address: "Nine months of intense negotiations succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did not." In diplomacy, noted the president, "words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America" (applause).

The implication is clear. Get rid of one dictator because of his supposed WMD programmes and others will be so afraid that they will voluntarily abandon their weapons programmes. Therefore, even if no WMDs were found in Iraq, we still made the world a safer place. The perfect comeback.

In Muammer Gadaffi's case, this proposition is questionable. In fact, Libyan representatives offered to surrender WMD programmes more than four years ago, in then-secret negotiations with US officials. In May 1999, their offer was officially conveyed to the US government - at the peak of the "12 years of diplomacy with Iraq" that Mr Bush now disparages.

Libya was facing a deepening economic crisis amid disastrous economic policies and mismanagement of oil revenues. In this context, United Nations and US sanctions that prevented Libya importing oilfield technology thus prevented Mr Gadaffi from expanding oil production. The only way out was to seek rapprochement with Washington.

Reinforcing this imperative was Mr Gadaffi's quest for respectability. Fed up with pan-Arabism, he turned to Africa, only to find little support from old allies. Removing the sanctions and their stigma became his priority.

From the start of President Bill Clin ton's administration, Mr Gadaffi had tried to open back-channels. Disappointed, he turned to Britain, first settling a dispute over the shooting of a policewoman outside the Libyan embassy in London and then offering to send the two Libyans accused in the Lockerbie PanAm 103 bombing for trial in a third country.

For the US, the downside was that as the Libyan suspects were brought to The Hague for trial, pressure mounted in the UN Security Council to lift the sanctions. The task of US diplomacy then was to maintain the sanctions until Mr Gadaffi had fulfilled other obligations under the UN resolutions: ending support for terrorism, admitting culpability and compensating victims' families. That was why the Clinton administration opened the secret talks and set one condition - that Libya cease efforts in the UN to lift the sanctions. It did, and at our first meeting, in Geneva in May 1999, we used the promise of official dialogue to persuade Libya to co-operate in our campaign against Osama bin Laden and on compensation for Lockerbie. Libya's representatives seemed prepared to put everything on the table, saying Mr Gadaffi had realised Libya and the US faced a common threat from Islamic fundamentalism and would actively co-operate against al-Qaeda.

On the issue of WMD, the US at the time was concerned about Libya's clandestine production of chemical weapons. Expressing a preference for a multilateral forum, Libyan representatives offered to join the Chemical Weapons Convention and open its facilities to inspection. In October 1999, Libya repeated its offer on chemical weapons and agreed to join the Middle East multilateral arms control talks.

Why did we not pursue the Libyan WMD offer then? Because resolving the PanAm 103 issues was our condition for engagement. Moreover, as Libya's chemical weapons programme was not considered an imminent threat, getting Libya out of terrorism and securing compensation had to be top priorities. We told the Libyans that once these were achieved, UN sanctions could be lifted - but US sanctions would remain until the WMD issues were resolved.

The fact that Mr Gadaffi was willing to give up his WMD programmes and allow inspections four years ago does not detract from the Bush administration's achievement in securing Libya's nuclear disarmament. But in doing so, Mr Bush completed a diplomatic game plan initiated by Mr Clinton. The issue here, however, is not credit. Rather, it is whether Mr Gadaffi gave up his WMD programmes because Mr Hussein was toppled, as Mr Bush now claims. As the record shows, Libyan disarmament did not require a war in Iraq.

The writer is director of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution and, as US assistant secretary of state in 1999, opened negotiations with Libya.