Hoon thanks troops
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon visited Basra in southern Iraq on Wednesday to meet – and thank – British troops.
He is expected to stay in Iraq for the rest of the week, spending most of his time with British troops.
There are 9,000 British soldiers based around Basra. A Ministry of Defence spokesman added the visit was “to pay them a personal visit and view their continued hard work”.
On Wednesday, Mr Hoon sat down in the soldiers’ mess and shared a full English breakfast with the men and women.
He said British soldiers were in “very good heart” and doing a tremendous job.
Mr Hoon is expected to meet with medics, engineers and logisticians during his fleeting visit.
He is also due to meet troops from the Black Watch, who recently returned to Basra following their month-long stint at Camp Dogwood, near the Sunni “triangle of death”.
Speaking in Iraq, Mr Hoon said elections on January 30th were still very much on the cards, despite sporadic attacks against the US-led coalition.
“The electoral system does allow people, for example, to vote in different places and I am aware efforts are being made to find appropriate ways to overcome security difficulties should they arise,” he said.
Mr Hoon added that there were no plans at present to move British troops into the American zone.
“We have received no further requests to go into the American zone, nor do we have any plans to do so,” he said.
“The Black Watch deployment, as I made clear at the time, was an exceptional deployment to help with a particular operational situation.”
Mr Hoon’s meeting with Black Watch soldiers has been described as a “shameless media stunt” by campaigners fighting to keep six Scottish regiments from being merged into a single “super-regiment”.
