Reid suggests UK troops could soon leave Iraq

Defence Secretary John Reid has suggested that UK troops could begin withdrawing from Iraq this year.

In a speech to the Foreign Press Association in London yesterday, Mr Reid said that the "time is approaching" when coalition forces could begin leaving Iraq. However, he stressed that the government would not "cut and run".

The Defence Secretary said: "All of this depends on the conditions we have drawn up and the circumstances on the ground being right.

"Our commitment to Iraq and its people is unchanged and we have made significant progress."

Mr Reid laid out four conditions to be met before troops would withdraw:

• The threat from insurgents needed to be reduced to a manageable level;
• Iraqi security forces needed to be more able to deal with the threat themselves;
• Local government bodies needed to be effective and receive support from central government;
• The UK government needed to be confident that they could still provide support and backup to local forces if required.

Mr Reid said: "If and only if these conditions are met and if things in Iraq continue to progress as they are, there will be significantly fewer British forces there by next year."

Mr Reid said that the government's intention had never been to create "a mirror-image" of Britain. He said: "That would never work and it is not what the Iraqis want.

"Our purpose has been to give Iraqis the tools to build the kind of nation they want. It is not for us to say how that nation should look. That is for Iraqis to decide."

However, he outlined the "enormous progress" that has been made, including the establishment of a constitution, a fair political process, a growing economy and the creation of military forces that worked for, rather than against, law-abiding Iraqi citizens.

However, Mr Reid said that the enemies of Iraq remained "formidable" and that there was still a long way to go. He said: "Handing over security responsibility is not likely to be rapid or simple. It does not mark the end, only the beginning. The extremists will attempt to step up efforts to derail this process as it unfolds.

The Defence Secretary said that terrorists were "desperately afraid of an Iraq whose people come to see extremism as the enemy of progress, not as an answer to injustice."

However, he said: "Our key task is not, as some claim, to defeat the insurgency ranged against Iraq. It is to ensure that Iraqis have the ability to do that.

"Ironically, the only result of continued terrorist violence has been, and will be, to delay our withdrawal, not to hasten it."

Mr Reid concluded: "Iraq will not be without its problems. Nobody is really expecting us to leave behind us a trouble-free society. No such thing exists.

"The day we leave will not be the final step on the road for the new Iraq. It will be the first."

(KMcA)