Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal voiced his country's frustration at the way the war is being handled.

"It's a very dangerous situation and a very threatening situation that is going toward disintegration," he said.

The prince, accompanied by Prince Turki, the new Saudi ambassador to the United States, addressed his worries over the Bush administration's handling of the conflict to a small group of journalists at a meeting in the Royal Saudi Embassy in Washington last week.

Sectarian clashes in Iraq that have been tearing apart the country's Shiite and Sunni communities, have now started affecting Shiites. Rival Shiite groups are starting to fight one another. In recent weeks, there have been clashes between the Mahdi Army, run by the maverick young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the Badr Brigade, loyal to the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

Warning of the dangers of Iraq breaking up, Faisal said, "All the dynamics are there pressing the people away from each other." The Saudi prince sees real perils in separating the Iraqi-Arabs, the Shiites from the Sunnis.

From the outset of the war, Faisal said, the Americans have tended to see the Sunnis in Iraq as the enemy. Indeed, most of Saddam's men were Sunnis from towns and villages where after invading the country the United States engaged in an anti-Baathist crusade. Sunnis were kicked out of the army and the civilian administration; their salaries were frozen; it was, said the Saudi prince, "an invitation for many to join the resistance."

And from there, it all went all downhill. More and more out-of-work Sunnis - many of them former members of the armed forces or the Baath Party - rallied the anti-coalition resistance.

Faisal said the military option in Iraq was not the answer; dialogue should be engaged to find a solution to the crisis. "Guns don't speak, they just kill," said the Saudi prince.

If the situation continues to deteriorate as it has in the recent months, "disintegration (of Iraq) is inevitable," warned Faisal.

Asked if the Constitution the Iraqis are trying to write - and upon which the Bush administration is placing much hope - would help solve the crisis, Faisal pointed out that "even a constitution can be used in the wrong way. The importance is not the constitution per se, it is what the people do with that constitution that is important."

The immediate danger for Iraq, according to the prince, is the possibility of partition. If Iraq were to break up, the country would most likely split into three parts.

The autonomous Kurdish region in the north would declare its independence; Kurdistan is already practically independent, with its own militias, its own police force, its own security apparatus, and its own airport.

The Sunnis would take the center and the Shiites the south. But along the way, total havoc would ensue. The Kurds and Shiites have the benefit of sitting atop oil-filled land, something most of the Sunni-dominated areas lacks. Faisal warned "a struggle for the natural resources of Iraq" among the three groups would ensue if the country were divided.

In that eventuality, Faisal predicts, Iran will most likely come in to assist their fellow Shiites. The Islamic republic has already been active in supporting the Shiites by sending fighters, money and weapons.

Turkey will act to prevent the creation of an independent Kurdistan, a possibility that Ankara dreads.

"And do you think that Arab (Sunni) countries will sit this out?" asked the prince. The likelihood of the Sunnis being left on their own to falter and fall is unlikely.

Unless something is done to bring Arab-Iraqis together and to tempt them away from the resistance, the result will be catastrophic, he predicted.

The prince recommended the United States engage Iran in dialogue, saying, "Iran is an old nation with great potential for the future to be a great stabilizing force. Iran perceives itself as playing a larger role in the area.

"We are sure we can reach an accommodation to secure and stabilize the situation, said Faisal.

Despite anti-American sentiments in the Middle East caused by the unfaltering U.S. support of Israel and American support to Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war, Faisal said the United States was still remembered fondly for when it dispatched thousands of men to help liberate Kuwait in 1990-91.

"Proof that the United States is not an imperialist nation is that they had 50,000 troops in Saudi Arabia, and when asked to withdraw them, they did."

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