George W. Bush on Tuesday dismissed the rapidly hardening consensus that Iraq is in a state of civil war in spite of the adoption of the term by analysts, media organisations and prominent politicians from both main US parties.

Mr Bush, who will on Thursday meet Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, inJordan, said that the sectarian violence in Iraq had been fomented by the al-Qaeda terrorist group as a deliberate strategy to force the Americans out of Iraq. Last week a suspected Sunni group set off bombs that killed 200 Iraqi Shia in Baghdad in the worst phase of sectarian killings since an attack in February on the Shia holy shrine of Samarra.