Tony Blair has made it pretty plain (until he was rebuffed by President Bush in Camp David) that he wants the UN to play a central role in the restructuring of Iraq.His antennae are right. If the Pentagon has grossly misread the motivations of the Iraqis in the war, they stand to make even bigger errors after it. The length of the war makes the task of rebuilding all the greater. The nationalist response of the Iraqis to a foreign invasion makes a military presence to undertake it all the more unacceptable.

The population may, indeed will, welcome the overthrow of Saddam Hussein when it is finally achieved, but it will resent the means by which it was accomplished. The sight of foreign governors riding round in jeeps managing the civil administration will grate as each week goes by, the more so should terrorist acts bring a military clampdown.There is nothing in this for the British. We will have to serve US military plans in peace as in war, patrolling the streets, enforcing military regulations Our troops will be associated with America's. We will be seen through the Arab world as imperialists, not liberators If we gain contracts, we will be viewed as carpetbaggers. If we carve out a particular area to run, this will serve only to confirm our territorial ambitions."We're here to show the Iraqis that we want to help them," said an enthusiastic British officer interviewed near Basra the other day, "and to reassure them that we're here for the long haul." Nice sentiments but, if this is what we've been telling our troops, entirely wrong-headed. It may be uncomfortable to face after all our rhetoric of liberation, but the Iraqis don''t seem to want foreign troops on their soil over the long haul.That doesn't mean that we shouldn't commit ourselves to aiding reconstruction. But not through the military and not as a prolongation of the invading coalition.

And not, frankly, as the junior party of a US-led programme that has already chosen its military governors and awarded some of the major contracts to its favoured firms.The best course for Britain at this moment is for Tony Blair to announce, at the appropriate moment, that he intends to bring back the troops within a set time, say a month after the end of the war. Britain, he should say, will participate fully in reconstruction It is prepared to set aside the funds It will provide, goods, expertise and policemen. But it believes that the administration should be a civil one, not military, and it wishes the reconstruction to be organised through the offices of the UN and other international institutions.It would be a pretty shocking statement to the Pentagon. But it would, in one decision, make clear that Britain joined this enterprise in order to remove the threat posed by Saddam Hussein to world peace; that it had no desire for influence, business or a military presence in the region after this was achieved; and, after all the rows and divisions of the pre-war build-up, that it was prepared to throw itself whole-heartedly into multilateralism for the peace.It would be right for the British, it would be right for the international community and, in the end, it would be right for the Iraqis.a.hamilton independent.co.uk More from Adrian Hamilton. "Well," a friend snapped at me last night as she handed me a picture of a burned Iraqi child "There You got what you wanted. Happy now?" Only a psychopath could look at those images – a baby girl who will never grow breasts because her chest is so badly burned, a little boy with no legs, a seven-year-old girl who will never draw breath again – and not question the justice of this conflict.