Iraq 'could follow Afghan path'

US commanders have admitted they face a determined enemy

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the US it risks creating a haven for Islamic militants in Iraq.

He said that without rapid action to restore sovereignty and enlist UN support, Iraq faced a situation like that in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Mr Putin recalled that the war with Soviet troops had attracted volunteers from across the Islamic world.

He also criticised the West for not treating militants fighting Russia in Chechnya as a similar threat.

The Russian leader was speaking in a wide-ranging interview he gave to the New York Times newspaper.

Mr Putin, who most recently had talks with US President George W Bush at the end of September, stressed that ties between the two countries were good.

Fundamentalists

Iraq, the Russian leader said, could "become a new centre, a new magnet for all destructive elements".

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Under Saddam Hussein, he argued, Islamic fundamentalists had posed no threat from within Iraq.

"He either exterminated them physically or put them in jail or just sent them into exile," he said.

However, he added, a "great number of members of different terrorist organisations" from "all the Muslim world" had entered Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

America now risked becoming mired in a decade-long war there like the Soviet Union in Afghanistan before.

In the aftermath of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, foreign militants there formed al-Qaeda, the network of Islamic extremists held responsible for the 11 September attacks on America.

Mr Putin compared separatist militants fighting Russian rule in mainly Muslim Chechnya to Islamic militants abroad and asked why Moscow did not have greater international support for its battle against them.

Credibility

Urging Mr Bush to restore Iraqi sovereignty rapidly, he said that Washington must also seek greater international legitimacy for the forces deployed there - a clear reference to a new UN Security Council resolution on Iraq.

"How would the local population treat forces whose official name is the occupying forces?" he asked.

"We need to change the status of these forces."

But Mr Putin also appeared to agree with America's long-held position that it should command any future multinational force.

"In general, multinational forces are good politically but there is nothing good in it from the military point of view," he said.