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British Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce on Wednesday that thousands of his country's troops are to begin withdrawing from Iraq in weeks, according to media reports confirmed by the White House.
According to The Sun and The Times, Blair will say that the first contingent of 1,500 troops will leave the war-torn country and arrive back in Britain in a matter of weeks, and a further 1,500 will follow by the end of the year.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, meanwhile, confirmed that Blair told US President George W. Bush Tuesday of his plans for troop withdrawal.
“We view this as a success,” Johndroe said, suggesting the British move was a sign of increasing stabilization in Iraq.
“They spoke about this this morning on the phone,” he said.
Blair is set to appear before parliament on Wednesday for his weekly half-hour question-and-answer session.
According to the press reports, Blair will say that Operation Sinbad — involving attempts by British and Iraqi troops to secure the southern town of Basra from insurgents — has been a success, but will also stress that hopes for a withdrawal are conditional on signs that Iraqi forces are able to take over.
A spokesman for Blair's Downing Street office would not confirm or deny the report, but told AFP: “The prime minister said he will update parliament first about these matters, and it's right that he does that.”
Britain's apparent decision to pull troops out of Iraq comes soon after Bush announced he would send 21,500 extra combat troops to the country, on top of the 138,000 US soldiers already there.
Britain has about 7,100 troops in Iraq, most of them based around Basra. It is the second-largest foreign contingent of soldiers after that of the United States.
In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Blair rejected suggestions that he should bear responsibility for the sectarian violence in Iraq, but said Britain and the United States had a duty to bring it to an end.
He said in the interview that Washington was not pressurising London to maintain its troop levels and recognised that the security situation was different in British-run Basra than in Baghdad.
The United Nations said in January that at least 34,452 Iraqis died across the country and another 36,685 were wounded in 2006.
A total of 132 British troops have died since the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003 while there have been 3,127 US military fatalities in the same period, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
