Britain to cut 1,600 Iraq troops

In sharp contrast to the American troop buildup in Baghdad, Prime Minister Tony Blair today announced that Britain will withdraw up to 1,600 of its roughly 7...

In sharp contrast to the American troop buildup in Baghdad, Prime Minister Tony Blair today announced that Britain will withdraw up to 1,600 of its roughly 7,100 British troops in southern Iraq in the next few months.

“The next chapter in Basra’s history can be written by the Iraqis,” Blair said, referring to a plan to transfer security responsibilities to Iraqi forces. Most of the British troops now in Iraq are deployed in and around the port city of Basra near the southern tip of the country.

Speaking in parliament, Blair said “the situation in Basra is very different from Baghdad” because there was no Sunni insurgency or “Al-Qaeda base” in Basra. Even so, he said, British troops — whom he described as “brave beyond belief — were regularly coming under fire in the area.

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Word of the planned withdrawal had already begun to seep out on Tuesday, and the White House had given the idea a kind of public blessing. In Washington on Tuesday, a spokesman for the National Security Council, Gordon Johndroe, said that “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.”

Johndroe added that President Bush and Blair had spoken to each another on Tuesday and that 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.”

Britain has insisted for several months that it will reduce its troop levels in Iraq as soon as Iraqi security forces can take over from them — a marked contrast to America’s decision to increase military personnel in and around Baghdad with a buildup of more than 20,000 troops.

Other allied nations are also planning withdrawals. On Wednesday, the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced all of his country’s 460 troops in Iraq would be out by August. And a spokeswoman for the Lithuanian government said that her country was “seriously considering” withdrawing its small contingent of 53 soldiers soon.

–ALAN COWELL