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<snip>In some of the first direct evidence of serious divisions between the key allies in the run-up to the conflict, the former British Ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, said the US had failed to focus on what might happen after Saddam had been overthrown.
His admission raises serious questions that a lack of planning by US forces is at least partly to blame for Iraq's present security problems.
Last week 17 Italians and eight Iraqis were killed by a suicide bomber in the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriyah. It was the worst atrocity in the country for three months.
In an interview with The Observer, Meyer, who was ambassador just before the war began, said there were a series of meetings between British and American officials between the signing of the United Nations Resolution 1441 last November and the start of the war in March.
The British regularly raised their concerns about how much planning was going on to secure the country after Saddam, but the issue was largely ignored.
'One of the things that did not work out between us was a properly agreed strategy,' Meyer said.
'I suspect that a lot of things that we were saying to the Americans when we had a number of meetings towards the end of last year on post-Saddam strategy, a lot of those things have now been shown to be right.'
Meyer was referring to the security situation in Iraq, which critics say has been blighted by a lack of co-ordination between American forces and a lack of understanding about what the response of sections of the Iraqi population would be to the occupation.
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