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Straw hints at UK troop withdrawal from Iraq this year

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Feb 1, IRNA
UK Troops-Iraq
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Wednesday gave his clearest indication to date of plans to start withdrawing British troops from Iraq by suggesting that there would be some "good news" this year.

"We cannot publish today a timescale saying we are going to leave on this date. But what we can and are doing is in active discussions about how we draw down our troops on a province by province basis as we and the Iraqi government are convinced it is safe for them and for us to do so," Straw said.

"And I think we will see, over the next 12 months, some good news in that respect," he said in an interview with BBC Radio Four's flagship current affairs programme, Today.

The foreign secretary's comments came after renewed calls for a withdrawal timetable to be set following the killing of the 100th British serviceman in Iraq.

He insisted that not one of those killed in the toll "died in vain" as Iraq was now forming its first ever "genuinely democratic and broad-based government."
"I have watched that country move from being an awful, almost perpetual, tyranny under Saddam through to a country which has had three democratic elections in the last year," Straw said.

The British government is also under pressure to reduce its some 8,500 strong military presence in Iraq because of concern about the shortage of troops following the recent announcement of increasing its deployment in Afghanistan later this year to around 5,700.

Following the death of the 100th British soldier in Iraq, Stop the War Coalition (STWC) was organizing 100 nationwide vigils Wednesday, during which the names of the dead will be read out.

"The mood amongst the families of those who have died has hardened.

Every time a soldier dies it brings back to them the unnecessary deaths of their sons and husbands," STWC spokesman Andrew Burgin said.

The most recent authoritative opinion poll conducted in Iraq by the Oxford Research Institute for the BBC found in November that 80 per cent of Iraqis had no trust in the coalition forces and that their removal was their second highest priority.

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