(LONDON) - The former EU envoy to Afghanistan has sharply criticised NATO and US-led operations there, saying there is no coherent strategy and progress is unlikely while George W. Bush remains US president.

In a BBC interview to be aired Tuesday, Francesc Vendrell lamented that "so many mistakes" were made after the US-led invasion in 2001 and warned that mounting civilian casualties were undermining support for the coalition.

Asked if the West had a coherent strategy for victory in Afghanistan, he said "no", explaining: "For as long as the Bush administration is in office it is impossible to change the Bush administration's approach to Afghanistan.

"They don't want to see any changes because they still hope to present Afghanistan as a success story.

"We will need to wait, not for very long, for a new administration to be established and at that point we need to reveal our strategy, not only a US strategy but the overall strategy, because clearly what we are doing so far is not going to lead to success."

After elections in November, a new US president will take office in January.

Vendrell said NATO and the United Nations failed to appreciate in the early years that the "Afghans were ready for a major transformation of the country", and "ready to accept a much greater role for the international community".

Instead, he said, "we became totally diverted by Iraq".

The Spanish diplomat, who left his job as envoy on August 31 after five years, warned that reports of major civilian casualties from NATO raids were "doing us an enormous amount of harm with the public".

Vendrell noted an air strike on a village on August 22 that the Afghan government and the UN say killed more than 90 civilians. The coalition at first rejected the toll, but the United States has reopened the investigation.

"In 2002 we were being welcomed almost as liberators by the Afghans," he told the BBC, according to pre-released extracts.

"Now we are being seen as a necessary evil, perhaps something that they need to put up with because our departure would probably mean a civil war, but these kinds of actions completely undermine the efforts to win hearts and minds."

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