A former head of Iraq's Central Bank predicted Monday that the spiraling cost of holding down Iraq will compel the United States to look for an early way to pull out of the country.

An exile in the West for the past two decades, Salah Shaikhly also said ``democratic forces'' in Iraq were on the retreat from religious and fundamentalist groups while political leaders were sowing ethnic division.

``Once the U.S. Congress and public opinion realize the true cost burden of the Iraqi campaigns for the U.S. taxpayer, they will force this and any future administration to quickly look for an honorable exit strategy,'' Shaikhly said.

There were already signs that U.S. efforts to prepare the ground for this were under way, he said.

In the past, President Bush and his aides have denied they are looking for a way to leave despite the mounting casualties among U.S. troops and the growing cost of the occupation effort.

Shaikhly was speaking at a two-day Geneva conference on the future of Iraq's petroleum sector organized by the British-based CWC Associates Ltd which works to promote investment in emerging markets and especially in the energy sector.

A senior economic official in the 1970s under the ruling Baath Party who left the country when now ousted President Saddam Hussein took full power, Shaikhly said the U.S. invasion and occupation would cost Washington more than $300 billion.

Now running a London-based consultancy on investment in Iraq, he said this burden had to be coupled with the likelihood that oil output and export would not improve significantly before 2010 and with the country's foreign debt of $357 billion.

These figures, Shaikhly argued, did not support the theory held widely in Arab countries that the United States and Britain invaded Iraq in March to seize control of its oil resources because the financial cost could not be recouped.…

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-cost.html