Reid: UK could withdraw troops from Iraq within 12 months
British troops could start to withdraw from Iraq over the next 12 months, defence secretary Dr John Reid said yesterday.
Dr Reid told CNN neither the Blair or Bush administrations held “imperialist ambitions” in Iraq and would stay only as long as needed.
Dr Reid said once security forces were trained in the Middle East country, Britain would “gradually run down our presence”.
“Now that isn’t going to be an event, that will be a process,” he said.
“The insurgency itself might go on a long, long time, so what we have to envisage is a transitional handover over a period of time so that the Iraqis themselves can gradually take control of their own security and counter-terrorism.
“But we will not be going unless and until they are in a position to do that, so it will be a conditional withdrawal, not set to any immutable time scale.”
He was responding to a leaked memo reported in the press which stated Britain was chewing over scaling back its presence to 3,000 troops by the middle of 2006.
The memo noted a “strong US military desire for significant force reductions”.
Britain has about 8,500 troops in Iraq.
Dr Reid’s comments came as more than 100 people died in a spate of suicide attacks and car bombings in Iraq over the weekend.
