Question: Is the Iraq war over or not?

Paul Beaver: I think, certainly, President Bush was right to say on May 1 that the war fighting stage was over. And it was very successful: in 28 days the Americans did an armoured advance at such speed that had never been done before.

That's not to diminish what the British did because they guarded the flank and ensured the home base was secure in Southern Iraq. And they've done as well as the Americans - if not better - since.

The problem the Americans have is that they did not think further than winning the war. They did not think about winning the peace. It's not traditionally what the Americans have done. In the last 50 years they have no real experience, other than being the marshal overlords of Germany and Japan, of nation-building. That's something the Brits have.

You've got to have the police service left intact and the army intact, even if there are a few Saddam supporters there. It doesn't matter because you've got to bring law and order. That really was a major failing.

The war is over but what we are now in is what the military call 'operations other than war'. We're into insurgency which you go back for a parallel to '65 in Vietnam or the situation in Malaya in the 50s.

It needs a totally different mindset and I'm not sure the Americans have got that mindset. They don't train their troops in counter-insurgency, they train them in war fighting and it shows.

Question: How does the coalition deal with a guerrilla war? How does it bring it to an end?

Paul Beaver: Guerrilla wars by tradition are ended not by military means but by politics. Guerrilla wars in South Africa led to Nelson Mandela becoming president. The EOKA rising in Cyprus led to Archbishop Makarios becoming the president of Cyprus. The Mau Mau in Kenya led to Kenyatta becoming president.

The only place where there has been total success has been General Templer's campaign in Malaya which created Malaysia. It's been the only time since 1945 that a counter-insurgency war has been won.

The problem that followed was that Indonesia thought it would have an opportunity to move into Borneo but they again were defeated.

There is no military solution to this. It has to be done by politics and that means having a government in Baghdad that is representative of all the people. Let them work out if it is going to be the Shia, the Kurds or the Sunni that are going to be in the majority. That's up to them.

We should not be trying to impose our version of democracy. And certainly not the American version of democracy. I think the majority of the British public would be against having an American democracy here.

I don't want to have an elected president and all the corruption that goes with that, thank you very much.

Question: Who do you negotiate with, given Saddam Hussein is 'unavailable'?

Paul Beaver: Well this is the problem the Americans have got now because they have delivered themselves to their enemy.

Classes at army staff college teach that what you don't do is fight on the ground of his choosing. The Americans have done that. They are there every day, a target for everyone that wants to come in.

The border with Syria is porous, the border with Iran in the North is porous, as is the border with Saudi Arabia. People can come straight up from Yemen through Saudi and into Iraq. Luckily the Jordanians have got a good border control and so have the Turks. Otherwise it's a pretty open area.

One of the problems the Americans have is that there are now so many groups there it's almost impossible to tell who's who.Question: Have Saddam loyalists played a clever game, losing the war, but destroying the peace?

Paul Beaver: Yes. Absolutely. They realised they couldn't fight a modern war so they've decided to fight an asymmetric war. In other words they are fighting the Americans with light weapons. They know that if the Americans bring their heavy weapons to bear in the Sunni triangle they are only going to increase the alienation of the population there. You can't alienate the ordinary people there. You've got to help them. Security has to come first but it has to go hand-in-hand with civil affairs.

Question: Does this have the potential to become another Northern Ireland?

Paul Beaver: For the British there is a real dilemma here: what do we do? I was listening to Baroness Symons at a dinner the other night and she was very eloquent on this subject.

She said very simply that 80 per cent of Iraq is in stable condition. It's not perfect, not completely safe but its stable. All of the British areas, except two villages are pretty stable. That's because there's been a closer rapport between the British and local people. Basra is pretty much in civilian control.

People are involved in their own destiny which is what we all want.

What does concern me is that we are allowing our media coverage to dominate in the Sunni triangle.

That's nasty area; people get killed there every day. They don't get killed in Basra every day.

Question: Is the government right to assert that international terrorists have spilled over the border to fill the vacuum... or is this simply an attempt to make the link between Iraq and global terror that wasn't there before the conflict?

Paul Beaver: I don't think Iraq and global terror but I do agree with the government. I think every terrorist is sending his training teams down there to polish up their skills with some extremely active service units against the most powerful army in the world.

Question: Why is a high-tech army suffering such losses?

Paul Beaver: Hey, I'm old enough to remember the 60s and Vietnam. I can remember the Americans facing exactly the same thing.

It was grenades, booby-traps, machine guns and bamboo spikes. It was all those nasty weapons of terrorism.

You can have the latest kit in the world, what they need is good intelligence and for people to be able to get in and sort out who the enemy is. Sometimes they may have to take drastic measures and kill people. But in reality you can't win this war by military means.

Question: Is there an alternative force - say a the UN take over. Would peacekeepers really be up to it?

Paul Beaver: No! Listen. I was in Bosnia. I've seen the United Nations at work. The last thing we want in this there at the moment are UN peacekeepers. What did we have in Sierra Leone. We had battalions of Indians and Bangladeshi soldiers. Then 200 British soldiers went in and sorted the situation out. It's professional armies not conscripts that you need not peacekeepers with all the corruption that brings with it - because it always does.

What you need is for the UN to do the civil things which the UN does brilliantly - UNICEF - they really know what they're doing. Peacekeepers; no thank you keep the blue helmets out.

Paul Bremer and President Bush and Tony Blair need to engage in what's really happening and not - in president Bush's case playing for re-election in the states.

Is there a danger that the presidential race will deflect attention or lead to a quick exit by the Bush administration?

Paul Beaver: Absolutely. I don't think its mind is going to be elsewhere but it's certainly going to have its mind off of this unless it becomes a domestic issue. If the death rate continues at the current rate then by the election there will be 300 American casualties. That's an awful lot of soldiers to be killed. At that point we might see some questions asked.

Question: All things being equal how long do you believe British and US troops will have to remain inside Iraq?

Paul Beaver: The Americans can't run on this. This is not Mogadishu where they can cut and run. This is not Vietnam - they can't do a 1972. They've got to hand it over to a civilian power and that has to be Iraqi. They've got a lot of work to do and they've got to do it quickly.

Paul Beaver:

Question: What do you think some of the other issues will for George W Bush and Tony Blair when they meet?

Paul Beaver: Bush has got a number of things, I'm sure. It will be Iraq and the future of Nato. It's got to be the economy and the relationship between the two countries.

President Bush, I'm sure, will be plugging away for Boeing to win the future strategic tanker PFI order and the joint strike fighter. He's got those sort of things on the agenda.

And quite frankly I think he'll be looking for a bit of support from Tony Blair. In the United States, Britain is still viewed as an important political player when it comes to supporting the US. It's rated by the voting public. Tony Blair is rated by the voters from Iowa and Texas to California and Washington.

Question: Won't that be a difficult thing for a centre left politician like Tony Blair to do?

Paul Beaver: It's interesting. I think Tony Blair is a pragmatist. Let's face it; the United States is the most powerful country in the world. It's our biggest trading partner. It's absolutely right that he should have a good relationship with the US. The politics are sometimes different but not a lot.

In foreign affairs, with the exception of the idiotic American policy of wanting to invade everybody from Iran and Syria to North Korea and this awful thing of pre-emption, Britain actually has a lot of common ground with the United States.

Luckily, what's really good news is that the prime minister does not whole-heartedly support President Bush on everything that he does and I'm delighted with that.