UNITED NATIONS, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Quibbling about whether Iraq is in the throes of a civil war does nothing to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people, the top U.N. envoy in Iraq said on Monday.

"Getting into debates about whether something qualifies as a civil war according to one dictionary or another is almost minimizing the absolute tragedy of the situation," said Ashraf Qazi, the special representative of Secretary-General Kofi Annan for Iraq.

Rather than analyzing definitions, the focus should be on preventing "an outright human rights and humanitarian catastrophe," Qazi told reporters after briefing the Security Council on the situation in Iraq.

U.S. President George W. Bush has repeatedly rejected assertions that Iraq has descended into a civil war while Annan said in a BBC interview aired Dec. 4 that he believed it was.

"When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war -- this is much worse," Annan said.

In his briefing to the council, Qazi said Iraq "stands on the brink of civil war and chaos."

While vigorous efforts are under way to build up Iraq's security forces, it would take "some years and may take much longer" to make them self-sufficient and sufficiently professional, he said.

"Moreover the key issues confronting Iraq are not amenable to solutions based on force alone," Qazi said. "Excessive reliance on the use of force could indeed preclude negotiated compromise, the only sound basis for stability."

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