In a frank admission that London and Washington had underestimated the difficulty of rebuilding Iraq, John Sawers, Tony Blair’s special envoy, told The Times that the failure to find Saddam Hussein was making the political process more difficult, and that the coalition had failed to realise how much the Iraqis’ “attitude problems” after decades of oppression would hinder reconstruction.

On Sunday, the joint US-British administration, known as the Coalition Provisional Authority, dismayed many Iraqis by scrapping plans for a national conference to elect an interim Iraqi government next month. Instead it will appoint a political council, fuelling fears of a prolonged occupation.

Mr Sawers said that the country’s political system was dominated by radical or ethnic groups without wide support and that elections would exacerbate this. “The political parties are not established on a national basis; there is no established media yet where ideas can be debated.

“If you have an open political process where the political parties and media are undeveloped, and the radicals detect that, you are vulnerable to exposing the moderates to pressures they are not able to deal with,” he said. The authority will appoint a 25 to 30-strong “political committee” within six weeks that will appoint interim ministers and set up commissions to deal with issues such as a new legal code. A “constitutional convention” will draft a constitution, leading to national elections in another year or more.

Mr Sawers acknowledged that the delays would add to Iraqi anger. “If we are blocked, pushed backwards, the impatience will grow. There is an instinctive resistance to the idea of occupation, but that is minor compared to the overwhelming support for getting rid of Saddam,” he said.

Mr Sawers, a former Ambassador to Egypt and Downing Street adviser, was speaking in an ante-chamber of Saddam’s Republican Palace, now the authority’s headquarters.

About 80 political parties are thought to have been set up since Saddam’s fall and Mr Sawers said that the situation had to bed down before real power could be transferred. “In the first year after Franco’s death in Spain, 200 parties formed and it took 18 months for them to settle down. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same happened here,” he said.

“If you had a picture of Saddam’s body, like you had a picture of Ceausescu (the Romanian dictator, who was executed), it would provide certainty,” he said. “It is a bit of a problem. That is why de-Baathification is so important, because if people feel their top leadership is not going to change, it plays to the fear that still exists that Baathists will be back.”

Another problem was the number of attacks by Baath party supporters on coalition forces — up from 30 in April to 85 in May, with a dozen US soldiers killed in the past week. “There is a clear threat against coalition forces. The sense I get is that we’re seeing the remnants of small elements of the Baathist regime following a plan that was thought out beforehand about what to do if the regime collapses. I don’t think it is being directed from the centre by Saddam.”

Iraq’s infrastructure is dilapidated after three wars, 12 years of sanctions and 35 years of underinvestment. But, Mr Sawers said, the coalition had underestimated the extent to which certain attitudes would hold back reconstruction. The country had been “centrally run to a level that is almost unprecedented . . . Trying to make it function again and restore personal initiative means undoing 25 years of instinct inculcated by the regime.”

He cited ministries whose staff had shown minimal initiative in restoring services, failing even to clean up their own looted offices. “There was an unrealistic expectation that officials would return and get going again, but it hasn’t worked out that way. They’ve needed a high degree of leadership. You’re seeing the effect of decades of oppression which we underestimated.”

The psychological effect of oppression was even worse than that in Eastern Europe under communism, he said.

Mr Sawers, de facto deputy leader of 25 million people, said that physical and political reconstruction of a country had not been required on such a scale since the aftermath of the Second World War.

When he met Mr Blair in Basra last week, he told him that elements of the Iranian regime were trying to influence developments in Iraq. Few Iraqis want a theocracy, he says. He is confident that the country can become a freer society.

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