America and Britain could be forced to stay in Iraq until the end of this decade, according to an MP who has recently returned from serving in the Gulf.

In an interview with ePolitix.com, Dr Andrew Murrison warned that plans by the Bush administration to hold elections next year could be cancelled.

"Unless President Bush can pull something out of a hat, it seems to me to be unlikely," he said.

"I would be very surprised if America will be out of Iraq this decade."

The MP for Westbury spent a month working as a medical officer with troops and civilians in the area around the strategic port of Az Zubayr.

He delivered a scathing verdict of claims by a former Iraqi colonel that Saddam' Hussein's deadly weapons arsenal had been hidden away and could have been used within 45-minutes.

"I have to say that after all these months, if all that can be produced is an anonymous Iraqi colonel who has given some extremely vague details about the nature of what he supposes were weapons of mass destruction, I think it suggests strongly that these things were not available at the time in question," he said.

He also warned that the support of Iraqi civilians for the invasion was conditional at best.

"Local people were at best ambivalent towards coalition forces. Certainly with the ones I spoke to, there was no great enthusiasm for the current occupation," Dr Murrison said.

"I think any toleration that ordinary Iraqis have to coalition forces is very conditional. It's conditional upon an early withdrawal."

"For as long as this goes on and on, I think that sympathy is going to wear more and more thin. That's the worry.

"We are potentially facing a deteriorating situation because once we've lost the sympathy and support of the mainstream swathe of Iraqi people I think we're in deep trouble.

"That will allow a fertile ground for unhelpful elements - both indigenous and those who are coming in from neighbouring states."

Dr Murrison, who was a critic of the war, was called up for active service because he was a Royal Navy surgeon until 2000.

He warned that critical mistakes had been made by the US military high command had been made in planning post-war Iraq.

A key error, he believed, was the presumption that the Iraqi army would defect to Coalition forces and become the country's new security force.

He urged US military planners to use British expertise gained from decades of patrolling in Northern Ireland.

"The British army is fairly expert at the kinds of counter-terrorism that it's now being asked to carry out," he said. "I think it would be very foolish of the Americans not to take note of the way the British have conducted themselves."