THE ELECTION in Iraq tomorrow is held against a dark and dangerous background. One by one the optimistic predictions of the US military have been confounded. Far from breaking the back of the Sunni insurgency the assault on Fallujah has dispersed it to the other cities of central Iraq. The official Iraqi defence spokesman has said that there are now more insurgents than there are soldiers in the multinational force. The CIA acknowledges that our action in Iraq has created a new focus for international terrorism. The search for weapons of mass destruction has been formally called off.

These results were predictable and predicted, but that can give no satisfaction to critics of the war. We have to look ahead from where we are now.

None of us has argued for postponement of the Iraqi election. Most Iraqis want elections, which will create a transitional government with some democratic legitimacy. A general delay would be a success for the terrorists. It would be justified only if the insurgency could be defeated by military means given a bit more time. We see no grounds for believing that.

There might have been a case for postponing the election just in the four most troubled provinces, including the cities of Mosul and Baghdad, if the Sunnis who live in those provinces had been promised elections at a later date. That might have given time and incentive to their leaders to break away from violence and take the political road. But the authorities chose an electoral system that treats Iraq as a single constituency. There are no candidates standing for particular cities or provinces. This made it technically very difficult to hold the election on different dates in different places.

The election should go reasonably well in the Shia south and the Kurdish north. But most Sunnis are likely to repudiate the result because they have been unable or unwilling to take part. The country could then face greater tension.

How should the nations which contribute troops to the multinational force respond? Now is the time to consider this before we are again driven by events. Already there is haemorrhage. The Dutch, the Poles and the Ukrainians have said that they will pull out in coming months. Behind the barrage of determined rhetoric the Bush Administration is re-examining its options. In Washington, for the first time, there is talk of exit strategy, no doubt because this President enters his second four years with lower poll ratings than any two-term predecessor. But neither they nor we can withdraw responsibly without regard to the mess we have already created.

We should tell the Iraqi leadership now that we draw a distinction between the security threat which they face (as a result of what we have done and left undone) and their central political problem. That political problem of bringing together Shias, Sunnis and Kurds must be for Iraqis to sort out. Our troops cannot be expected to police relations between the majority and a rejectionist minority. British and American troops are no substitute for a political process. The latest allegations of human rights abuse by the Iraqi security services sharpen the dangers to us of too close an identification.

By its actions our Government has imposed on all of us, supporters and opponents of war alike, an obligation to the people of Iraq. But that obligation cannot be open-ended. The costs of our presence — financial, political and human — rise every day. We can give the people of Iraq an opportunity but they must take it: we cannot take it for them. The British Government cannot long delay reaching a judgment. Donald Rumsfeld's four years are not an option for Britain, with our more limited troop numbers.

Moreover, the longer we remain in Iraq the more our occupation becomes part of the problem for the security situation rather than the solution. The heavy-handed deployment of US firepower in urban areas, against repeated British advice, has not weakened the insurgency but strengthened the ambition of most Iraqis for an end to foreign occupation.

The UN mandate expires in a year's time with the completion of the timetable for direct election of a representative government under an agreed constitution. Both Britain and America should inform the assembly elected this weekend that we expect to leave by the end of that UN mandate. Both the assembly and the occupying forces must then each do its part to fulfil the necessary political and security tasks to meet that timetable.

In the immediate future, we need to ensure that Iraqis do not perceive their new Government as being as closely identified with the occupying forces as the previous interim administrations were. A sensible start would be to end the visible symbol of the location of occupying powers and the Iraqi Government behind the same fortifications of the green zone.

No one should underestimate the difficulties into which we have plunged Iraq and ourselves. There are no happy choices. But this time we should plan ahead while choices still exist, and not simply trust in luck and over-optimistic assumptions again.

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