AN IRAQI exile who used to demonstrate against Saddam’s regime outside the Iraqi Embassy in London was yesterday confirmed as Baghdad’s new envoy to Britain, restoring diplomatic ties 13 years after they were cut.

Salah Shaikhly, a British citizen who was stripped of his Iraqi nationality two decades ago and still has no Iraqi passport, was last night the guest of honour at the annual diplomatic corps dinner hosted by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, for ambassadors and high commissioners to the Court of St James.

“I never imagined I would become ambassador,” the 64-year-old British-educated economist told The Times. “People at my age are normally preparing for retirement. I now have a new lease on life.”

Although the appointment will mean abandoning a comfortable life in Surrey, Dr Shaikhly said that he was determined to rebuild normal relations between Britain and Iraq and to serve the large Iraqi expatriate community here.

The task of restoring ties is daunting. As head of mission he inherits an embassy located in Queen’s Gate, South Kensington, an information office in Tottenham Court Road and a residence housed in a large villa in Holland Park.

The embassy and residence are uninhabitable and require extensive repairs. The embassy building has been locked for 15 months and police have sealed doors and windows after a break-in by squatters last year. When Dr Shaikhly visited yesterday, a tramp was living in the main entrance.

The new ambassador also encountered his first customer. He was approached by an Iraqi with an expired passport looking for consular help. The man was assured that soon the embassy would be able to deal with his problem.

“I feel sorry for him,” Dr Shaikhly said. “His passport had a hologram of Saddam’s face on it. I don’t think that is going to get him very far. There are thousands of Iraqis in this predicament. I am still waiting for my new Iraqi passport too.”

The new envoy will also have to unravel the tangled state of bilateral ties after more than a decade of enmity. Iraqi assets need to be unfrozen, debts paid and protocols signed between the governments to normalise relations.

But Dr Shaikhly, who went to Manchester University and has been married to a British woman for 40 years, regards serving the estimated hundreds of thousands of Iraqis living in Britain as his top priority. “In the old days the Iraqi Embassy was there to spy on people, to threaten, to make their lives difficult. I was often warned by Special Branch that I was the target of Saddam’s agents. Several colleagues were attacked,” he said.

“I want to establish a new relationship with the Iraqi community outside politics.” One plan is to encourage Iraqi professionals to return home.

As a diplomat, Dr Shaikhly said that he would have to put his own political views on hold. He was the co-founder of the Iraqi National Accord, one of the main anti-Saddam opposition groups, which he established with Iyad Allawi, the newly nominated Iraqi Prime Minister.

Like others in the INA he originally served the regime in Iraq, ending up as governor of the central bank in Baghdad in 1977. He then went to work for the United Nations as under-secretary for planning but fell out with the Baghdad regime in the early 1980s and settled in Britain, where he worked as an academic and raised his two daughters.

“It will be funny living and working at the embassy,” he said. “The last time I came here was to demonstrate against Saddam.”

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