The current situation in Iraq has become "much worse" than civil war, with life for ordinary Iraqis worse than under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, Kofi Annan has said.

In a damning assessment of present circumstances, the outgoing UN Secretary General said he had no doubt about the gravity of Iraq’s position, "given the level of the violence, the level of killing and the way the forces are ranged against each other".

"A few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war. This is much worse," he told the BBC.

The question of whether the sectarian violence in Iraq can be termed a civil war has become a highly controversial one.

Last week, Mr Annan - whose second term as head of the UN ends on December 31 – appeared to edge closer to using the phrase when asked if Iraq was in such a situation.

"I think given the developments on the ground, unless something is done drastically and urgently to arrest the deteriorating situation, we could be there. In fact we are almost there," he said.

Asked in the BBC interview about claims that the country’s citizens had been better off under the regime of the ousted dictator, Mr Annan said he understood the analogy. "If I was an average Iraqi, I would make the same comparison," he said.

"They had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets: they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back without a mother or father worrying ‘Am I going to see my child again?’.

"And the Iraqi government has not been able to bring the violence under control. A society needs minimum security and a secure environment for it to get on. Without security, not much can be done."

Mr Annan said that the international community would have to aid in the reconstruction effort because he was uncertain that Iraq could accomplish this on its own, adding that the future of the country had implications far beyond its own borders.

"We have a very worrisome situation in the broader Middle East and we also need to look at them as a whole, not as individual conflicts. There are linkages between these crises."

Commenting on speculation that Iran’s insistence on proceeding with its nuclear ambitions could lead to further military action, Mr Annan warned that the Middle East would not be able to handle another crisis.

"It’s in a very precarious and delicate state at this moment and I have indicated quite clearly that on the Iranian issue we need to do whatever we can to get a negotiated solution and that, in my mind, is the only one."

Asked what his biggest regret was from his time as Secretary General, he said it was that the war had claimed the lives of almost two dozen colleagues in a Baghdad bombing.

"It is the loss of 23 wonderful colleagues and friends I sent to Iraq who got blown away. They went to Iraq to try and help clean up the aftermath of a war I genuinely did not believe in…Of course, when that happens you ask questions: would they be here if I had not asked them to go?"

But he insisted he had done "everything I could" to stop the war in the first place, refuting suggestions that he should have spoken out earlier against US proposals to enter Iraq.

Giving advice to his successor, Ban Ki-moon, South Korea’a foreign minister, he only said: "He should do it his way. I did it my way, my predecessors did it their way and he should do it his way."

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