The US-led invasion of Iraq has increased the threat to the world from extremists, while Washington's attempts to impose Western-style democracy there have been a 'joke', former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami said on Wednesday.
Speaking to an audience of academics and journalists at the Chatham House international affairs think-tank in London, Khatami said democracy was a right for all people in the East or West but there was no one-size-fits-all model.
Instead, democracy needed to be tailored to the social, historical, cultural and religious make-up of an individual nation, he argued.
"One of the greatest jokes that Mr Bush makes is when he says he wants to export democracy to the Middle East," Khatami said of US President George W. Bush.
"Democracy is not something to be exported or given," the cleric told his audience through an interpreter during a question and answer session.
"Historically, human affairs depend on social conditions and experience. The experience of one country, one nation, cannot be extended to another geographical area with a different culture and conditions."
Eastern countries also deserved democratic governments but the "seed" of democracy "shall be cultivated in the land of Islam in another way because the conditions are different", he added.
On Iraq and Afghanistan, Khatami, whose visit prompted noisy protests outside the venue from more than 100 exiled Iranian pro-democracy campaigners, said Tehran supported both democratically-elected governments.
But with spiralling sectarian violence in Iraq and a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, he said the United States had been defeated in its "war on terror", describing US involvement in both countries as "a great mistake".
"Not only were they not able to stop terrorism or eradicate it in these two countries but they turned it into a new form of terrorism in the Middle East, in Islamic countries.
"Whatever they are taking out of Iraq is just dead bodies of their beloved ones," he said in a reference to mounting US military casualties in Iraq.
Khatami's address -- which did not touch on the current nuclear dispute -- revolved heavily around the need for more tolerance, dialogue and understanding between East and West.
But he also answered charges that Iran was anti-democratic, with widespread torture and execution of opponents to the Islamic Republic, including during his tenure.
He accepted there may have been miscarriages of justice and "wrongdoing" in the past but defended Iran's record: "It's not just in Iran that it's taking place.
"Wherever torture is taking place -- Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Israel, the US, British prisons, in Iranian prisons -- it's wrong," he added.
On his own alleged involvement, he said that where abuses took place "sometimes I was not in a position to do anything about it".
Compared to some Middle Eastern countries, which he did not name, Iran had championed women's rights in higher education, public office and at the ballot box while he had not opposed free speech, he added.
But he said there was still a "long, long way" to go until democracy was achieved.
Khatami is on a four-day visit to Britain. On Tuesday, he was given an honorary degree by Saint Andrew's University in Scotland, prompting protests from British lawmakers and exiled Iranian dissidents.
The British Parliamentary Committee for Iranian Freedom called him "a central pillar of the theocratic and brutal regime in Iran" while Mahmoud Tabrizi, from the Association of Iranian Academics in Britain, described him as a "smiling mullah".
"He was instrumental in creating this mirage of reformism while the regime continued... It's because of appeasement towards Khatami that we end up with someone like (current Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad," he told AFP.
Khatami is due to meet the leader of the world's Anglicans, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, on Thursday and address academics and postgraduate students at Oxford University on Friday.