By Suadad al-Salhy

BAGHDAD, July 26 (Reuters) - Neighbouring countries' failure to check the flow of insurgents, weapons, drugs and other dangerous cargo into Iraq has made it close to impossible to secure Iraq's porous borders, a minister said.

"This is a political problem more than a security problem," Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Ali al-Khafaji said.

Of the six nations that that run along Iraq's more than 3,600 km-long (2,250 mile) border, Khafaji, who oversees Iraqi border forces, gave only Kuwait to the south good marks.

"The cooperation between Iraq and neighbouring nations in securing common borders is weak, with the exception of Kuwait," he told Reuters.

Iraq is doing what it can on its own, he said, building a 160-km (100-mile) ditch -- 3 meters deep and 3 meters across -- to stop people and vehicles crossing the vast, sparsely populated desert that joins western Anbar province to Syria.

Iraq has been struggling for years to improve border security in order to halt the flow of Sunni Islamist militants from Iraq's western neighbours such as Syria and Saudi Arabia and stem the entry of Shi'ite fighters and weaponry from Iran.

With backing from the United States, border forces have grown to around 42,000, but Khafaji said Iraq may need to almost double that as the violence unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion eases and commercial and passenger traffic with neighbouring nations picks up.

Iraq will also need to add almost 200 border stations to the 610 that dot its frontiers today.

But even border patrols and cargo scans have the potential to become politically charged issues as the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Arab, struggles to find the right footing with largely Sunni Arab nations to the west, which have kept their distance since 2003, and majority Shi'ite Iran to the east, with whom Iraq fought a bloody war in the 1980s.

FOREIGN FIGHTERS

Since U.S. forces arrived in 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein, the United States has accused Syria of allowing Sunni Arab Islamist militants such as al Qaeda to sneak into Iraq and stir sectarian hatred with targeted suicide bombings.

While the flow of foreign fighters appears to have fallen off, U.S. forces still accuse Iran of equipping and training Shi'ite militias in Iraq, which Tehran denies.

Khafaji said the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq through Saudi Arabia had dropped substantially -- but only when the Saudi government boosted security in order to halt the flow of drugs being trafficked through Iraq into Saudi Arabia.

Khafaji said the border with Iran continued to be a problem, especially around the most narrow portions of the Shatt al-Arab waterway in southern Iraq.

"If Iran wants to send weapons to Iraq, it can," he said.

Khafaji ascribed the lack of cooperation largely to sectarian agendas in other capitals where some officials see the rise of a Shi'ite-led Iraq as a threat.

"They don't like the idea of Shi'ites ruling this country. But Shi'ites did not get into power by using tanks ... Our (democracy) has brought Shi'ites and Kurds to power," he said.

Khafaji's comments underscore increasingly open complaints from within Maliki's government about interference in internal affairs as Iraq looks toward national elections in January.

After years of U.S. dominance in Iraq, politicians are keen to convince voters they are not beholden to foreign agendas.

Asked how Iraq might improve border cooperation, Khafaji said he hoped Iraq, whose army and police have been rebuilt from the ground up since 2003 and are only now taking over security from U.S. forces, needed to flex its muscles.

"In my view, we need to improve the skills of our security forces because the world doesn't respect the weak," he said. (Writing by Missy Ryan and Suadad al-Salhy; Editing by Alison Williams)

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