Iraqis take Basra command as UK plans troop cuts
Source: Reuters
(Recasts with reported Blair announcement on withdrawal) By Peter Graff and Deborah Haynes LONDON, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to announce on Wednesday that Britain will start to withdraw its troops from Iraq within weeks, British media said. Blair would tell parliament 1,500 soldiers would leave by the summer, BBC News, the Sun tabloid and the Times reported. Britain has 7,100 troops in Iraq. The Sun said the first batch would arrive home in April. A further 1,500 troops would be out by the end of the year. The Financial Times, for its part, said Blair would first cut troop levels by 1,600, while the Guardian newspaper put the figure at 1,000, with all troops exiting by the end of 2008. A spokesman at the prime minister's Downing Street office declined to comment, but said parliament would be updated first on any announcement about Iraq. The Ministry of Defence was not immediately available for comment. Blair was expected to say the withdrawal reflected Britain's success in southern Iraq, where control of security is being handed back to Iraqi forces, according to the media reports. U.S. President George W. Bush, who spoke to Blair on Tuesday, was also upbeat about a British pull-out and said he hoped U.S. forces could follow suit when conditions allowed. "President Bush sees this as a sign of success and what is possible for us once we help the Iraqis deal with the sectarian violence in Baghdad," Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said. "While the United Kingdom is maintaining a robust force in southern Iraq, we're pleased that conditions in Basra have improved sufficiently that they are able to transition more control to the Iraqis," he said. In contrast to London, Washington is sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq as part of Bush's new strategy. BASRA SECURITY TRANSFER Britain has not yet formally announced cutbacks to its force, but Defence Secretary Des Browne has said he hopes to bring thousands of troops home by the end of this year. Defence officials have spoken of drawing their force down from 7,100 to about 4,700 over the next six months as Iraqi troops take on more responsibility for security. In a sign of this process gathering pace, Britain put Iraqis in command of the main Iraqi army unit in Basra on Tuesday. "The transfer is a significant step towards Iraqi forces taking responsibility for security in the city," the British military said in a statement. Blair said on Sunday Britain would cut its force once Iraqis were responsible for security in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. He has said he will update parliament about the British mission in Iraq at the close of a four-month security operation in Basra -- Operation Sinbad -- which ended last week. "It is absolutely true, as we've said for months, that as the Iraqis are more capable down in Basra of taking control of their own security, we will scale down," Blair said in an interview on Sunday. "The operation that we've been conducting in Basra is now complete. And that operation has specifically been to put the Iraqi forces in the main frontline control of security within the city. And it's actually been successful as an operation." Since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, British troops have been responsible for Iraq's southernmost four provinces, which are mainly Shi'ite and have been quieter than mixed or mainly Sunni areas patrolled by Americans. The British handed over security responsibility for two of their four provinces to Iraqis last year and abandoned their main base in a third. Its force is concentrated in Basra itself and at a nearby air base. Commanders say they hope to withdraw from the city and keep a reserve force on standby at the base.
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