Suspected insurgents who were detained by joint United States and Iraqi forces walk inside an Iraqi military camp near Baquba, 60km (40 miles) north-east of Baghdad, yesterday. U.S.-Iraqi forces launched an offensive in the town of Baquba yesterday, killing three insurgents and detaining 44. - Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters):

UNITED NATIONS Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Iraq was in the grips of a civil war and many people were worse off now than under Saddam Hussein, according to an interview to be broadcast today.

Annan, who leaves office on December 31, described Iraq as being in an extremely dangerous situation and again questioned the ability of Baghdad's leadership to solve the civil strife by themselves.

"When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war - this is much worse," Annan said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television and radio. Last week, Annan told reporters Iraq was nearing civil war.

He said he agreed with Iraqis who claim that life is worse now than it was under Saddam. "I think they are right in the sense of the average Iraqi's life," he told interviewer Lyse Doucet, who spoke to him on Friday. The BBC provided a transcript of the interview.

"If I were an average Iraqi, obviously I would make the same comparison - that 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 home without a mother or father worrying, 'Am I going to see my child again?'" Annan said.

"And the Iraqi Government has not been able to bring the violence under control," he said.

Annan, who has proposed an eventual international conference on Iraq, which Baghdad's leaders have rejected, said, "Iraqis will have to come together and make it happen" but they would need outside assistance.

"They would need help from the international community and their neighbours, but some of the key things they have to do is the constitutional review, really looking at issues of revenue sharing - oil and taxation revenues, how do you share it fairly," he said.