The invasion of Iraq and the occupation of the country by US led multinational forces had been “a terrible episode for everybody”, a Foreign Office minister admitted yesterday.

Lord Malloch-Brown, who has acquired a reputation for making controversial remarks in public, said “a lot of people” had been lost, and no one could feel any sense of triumphalism.

The Foreign Office Minister, who was appointed by Gordon Brown as part of his “big tent” policy aimed at bringing in specialists with a wide range of talents, made his views clear on Iraq as President Bush, continuing his Middle East tour, gave a more up-beat assessment of security improvements in the country. He said that hope was returning to Iraq.

Lord Malloch-Brown, a former deputy secretary-general at the United Nations and a past critic of the war in Iraq, acknowledged during an interview on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One that he had hoped for a swift solution to the situation in Iraq. “At the beginning I devoutly hoped it would,” he said.

Iraq timeline: five years of conflict

From accusations that the weapons of mass destruction dossier had been sexed-up to withdrawal of British troops from Basra

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However, asked what he felt when he heard President Bush saying there would be victory eventually in Iraq, the minister said: “We’ve lost a lot of people there. This is not something that there’s triumphalism on any side [about]. This is a terrible episode for everybody.”

Lord Malloch-Brown said that Iraq was much more of a current political issue in the United States than it was in Britain. “The relative success now of the surge [of 30,000 extra US troops in Baghdad and other areas] and this excellent General [David] Petraeus [the US commander of the multinational force in Iraq] has a little bit taken it off the front page,” he said.

However, he predicted that Iraq would still be a huge issue in the US presidential debate.

In a separate interview, Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, gave a warning that British troops could be in Afghanistan for decades.

Under current policy the 7,800 troops now in Afghanistan, mostly in Helmand province in the South, are due to remain until 2009. But Mr Browne told The People that the commitment would last much longer.

He said: “We cannot risk it [Afghanistan] again becoming an ungoverned training haven for terrorists who threaten the UK. But there is only so much our forces can achieve. The job can only be completed by the international community working with the Afghan Government and its army.”

Mr Browne added: “It is a commitment which could last decades, although it will reduce over time.”

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defence said that the commitment would not involve just the military. “Previously it was a failed state and it’s going to be a long-term commitment to make sure it’s a stable country,” she said. The families of six members of the Royal Military Police who were killed by an angry mob in the Iraqi town of Majar al-Kabir in June 2003 have received a pledge from the Government in Baghdad to bring their killers to justice.

In a letter to the families, Jawad al-Boulani, the Iraqi Interior Minister, promised to do his best to find the criminals. In February 2006, a court in Baghdad issued arrest warrants for eight suspects but none of them has been detained despite pressure from the UK Government.

Corporal Mark Wright, 27, of the 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment, who died while trying to rescue a colleague from a minefield in southern Afghanistan in September 2006, could have been saved, but there was no helicopter available with winching equipment at the time, a board of inquiry report has concluded. Corporal Wright and other casualties had to wait five hours for an American helicopter to arrive.

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