A senior Iraqi politician said at the weekend he was studying the Northern Ireland peace process "very closely" to see if the same approach could help resolve the conflict in his own country, writes Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, in Bahrain
However Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, added that the problem was the greater intensity and viciousness of the Iraqi conflict. An additional difficulty was that the insurgents had no political dimension.
"We are not dealing with Sinn Féin and the IRA; what we have in Iraq is all IRA."
Violence was the only means used by the Iraqi insurgents, who were not interested in politics. "The motto of those who are fighting us is very simple: 'Either we rule Iraq or we burn Iraq.'"
In the days of the Saddam Hussein regime Mr Zebari was in exile, studying sociology at Essex University. He visited Northern Ireland in 1996 and 1997 in the lead-up to the Belfast Agreement.
The Iraqi opposition, many of them now in government, followed the peace process "very closely" and drew "many lessons".
However he acknowledged that there were differences between the two conflicts.
"Sinn Féin had a political agenda. Okay, it used a military wing to pursue this through a variety of violent means - terror attacks sometimes. But there was some care for civilians, and when there was a bomb there was a warning to the police. There is no warning in Iraq."
However he had learned from the Northern situation how conditions for peace could be created.
"When people realise that violence is futile, when there is hope in the political process that they will be treated equally, and when there is participatory, consensual democracy, people will start to change their views."
Increased investment and improved living conditions also helped persuade people to take a non-violent path. Yet one of the problems in Iraq was that "some of the people who are fighting us are not poor - they have a lot of money". Most of the insurgents were associates of the previous regime.
Mr Zebari was visiting the Gulf state of Bahrain to attend the Forum for the Future, a meeting of the G8 advanced industrial countries and Middle East governments and non-governmental organisations to discuss democratic and political rights in the region.
Commenting on the continuing threat to members of the Iraqi government, he said he and his colleagues had also been in danger when Saddam was in power.
"We go to work every day, and we think we are going to be blown up or assassinated. They have tried, but we are not giving in to them."