Former UN and Arab League envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said Sunday the unrest sweeping Iraq stemmed from the international community’s negligence of the conflict in neighboring Syria.

Former UN and Arab League envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said Sunday the unrest sweeping Iraq stemmed from the international community's negligence of the conflict in neighboring Syria.

"It is a well known rule: a conflict of this kind (in Syria) cannot stay confined within the borders of one country," Brahimi told Agence France Presse.

The international community "unfortunately neglected the Syrian problem and did not help to resolve it. This is the result," said Brahimi, who resigned from his post as UN-Arab League representative to Syria in May.

He stressed that he had told the UN Security Council in November that the so-called 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' was "ten times more active in Iraq than in Syria".

Brahimi added that Iran, a key ally of the government in Baghdad, had "its place" in the region, pointing to the "de facto cooperation between the United States and Iran" on the crisis in Iraq.