Cook criticises 'heavy handed' US

Mr Cook quit the government because he opposed the Iraq war

The US-led coalition must stop "trying to pacify Iraq by bombing it", said ex-cabinet minister Robin Cook.

The former foreign secretary criticised "heavy handed" military tactics which he argued had "bred resistance".

And he said nowhere else would a terrorist threat be responded to by "flattening the city in which they happen to operating".

Mr Cook was speaking as military operations continued to retake control of the Iraqi city of Falluja.

He said the problems in Falluja had begun the month after the US-led coalition had invaded Iraq.

Late elections?

"A number of parents complained their school had been occupied by the American military and 20 of the [unarmed] protestors were shot dead," he told the BBC.

"From then on the heavy-handed operations in Iraq have bred resistance and these operations will increase the resistance again...

"This really has got to be the end of the strategy of trying to pacify Iraq by bombing it."

Mr Cook went on to argue that elections planned for January were coming too late and he argued that the political problem in Iraq was the military tactics.

"Every time we have carried out a heavy-handed operation we have increased the political resistance."

Enemy that fades away?

Mr Cook said that he believed in Falluja the US forces would regain control.

He added: "But I don't think it will make a difference to the insurgency. I don't think it will be a defeat for the insurgents.

"The American forces are configured in a way to fight a conventional war against a major enemy. They seem to believe they are taking an important base.

"They don't understand that they are fighting a guerrilla war against an enemy that will fade away in front of them and appear around them as it has done in the last two days, launching attacks in a half a dozen other cities."