The Clipboard: Blair announces Iraq troop withdrawals

From an article¹:

The US government tonight welcomed Britain's decision to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, despite its own surge of more than 20,000 soldiers to the country.

Tony Blair announced a cut of more than 2,000 UK personnel in Basra by the end of the summer, in a special statement to parliament today...

...Mr Blair revealed that, since the successful completion of Operation Sinbad in the South, he would be able to authorise the pullout of some UK troops.

The current total of 7,100 will be cut to 5,500 in the coming months, and to 5,000 by the end of the summer, the prime minister told MPs. (link)

Hell of a long wait (almost a year since this was last updated; it all started here). Not as much as some might have hoped for, but a good start, and somebody convinced Blair to do it even as the U.S. is escalating in Iraq. What did they do, put a gun to Blair's head?

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Complete text of the article, Blair announces Iraq troop withdrawals, by Matthew Tempest

The US government tonight welcomed Britain's decision to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, despite its own surge of more than 20,000 soldiers to the country.

Tony Blair announced a cut of more than 2,000 UK personnel in Basra by the end of the summer, in a special statement to parliament today.

Dick Cheney, the US vice-president called it "an affirmation that in parts of Iraq...things are going pretty well."

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, insisted "the coalition remains intact", despite Britain's move.

"The British have done what is really the plan for the country as a whole, which is to transfer security responsibility to the Iraqis as the situation permits," she said after a meeting in Berlin with the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

"The coalition remains intact and, in fact, the British still have thousands of troops deployed in Iraq."

Mr Blair revealed that, since the successful completion of Operation Sinbad in the South, he would be able to authorise the pullout of some UK troops.

The current total of 7,100 will be cut to 5,500 in the coming months, and to 5,000 by the end of the summer, the prime minister told MPs.

Mr Blair, who has said he will be leaving Downing Street himself over the summer, was criticised last month for failing to attend a debate on Iraq.

The prime minister told MPs that the withdrawal was not unconditional, although he did not confirm reports today that all British troops would leave Iraq by the end of 2008.

He said: "What would be absolutely disastrous - and we are not doing in any shape or form - is to say that future draw-downs are unconditional.

"It is all conditions-based, based on the progress and the capability of the Iraqi forces."

The PM declared that "the next chapter in Basra's history will be written by the Iraqis",

Mr Blair said that the UK's remaining role in Basra would now be threefold: to train Iraqi forces, to secure the Iraq-Iran border and to maintain support routes.

Stressing that the situation in the south of Iraq was very different from the capital - where US forces are concentrated - he conceded that there was an "orgy of violence" in Baghdad, but insisted that "we did not cause the terrorism. The terrorists caused the terrorism."

Today also saw the Danish government announce it would withdraw its 460 troops from Iraq.

The prime minister refused opposition calls for an inquiry into the failings of the Iraq war, either public or by privy council, but added that it was "sensible to learn lessons".

However, he said that that point would be reached only "when troops are no longer on the ground".

Both the Conservatives, who supported the war, and the Liberal Democrats, who opposed it, welcomed the withdrawals, but David Cameron pointed out that the Basra air station, to which UK forces would withdraw, comes under regular rocket attack.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dem leader, said that Mr Blair "leaves behind a country on the brink of civil war, reconstruction stalled, corruption endemic and the region as a whole a lot less stable than it was in 2003."

Mr Blair said that British troops would be in the south of Iraq in 2008 for as long as the Iraqi government - which supported the moves - wanted them to be there.

The vast majority of British troops would pull back to the Basra airbase.

The former Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, who led his party's opposition to war in 2003, made a rare Commons intervention to chastise the UK and US government for keeping no official death toll for Iraqi civilian deaths.

The prime minister told the US president, George Bush, yesterday that Iraqi forces were now ready to take control in southern Iraq.

Before Mr Blair made his statement Mr Bush said that troop cutbacks by the UK - Washington's principal ally in Iraq - were "a sign of success" in Iraq and that conditions had improved in Basra in particular.

Mr Blair has previously said that the situation in Basra is different from that in the US sectors, which have been hit by higher levels of sectarian violence and terrorism.

There is still violence in Basra but British commanders and ministers are thought to believe that it is approaching an "acceptable level", which Iraqi forces are increasingly capable of dealing with.

US forces in the rest of the country - and especially in Baghdad - are currently being strengthened following Mr Bush's announcement of a "surge" of 21,500 extra troops.

The UK's decision has been made after ministers took on board the message coming from military chiefs over many months that the presence of British troops on the streets of Basra was increasingly unnecessary, even provocative.

The Iraqi army division based in Basra yesterday began to take its orders directly from an Iraqi headquarters in Baghdad for the first time. The transfer of command was described by the Ministry of Defence as a "significant step".

After reports of Mr Blair's intentions broke last night, the Australian defence minister, Brendan Nelson, said that his country would not set a timetable to reduce its forces in Iraq, which amount to around 800 troops.

Troop figures for the other elements of the US-led coalition currently stand at around: South Korea (2,300 troops), Poland (900), Georgia (800), and Romania (600).

A total of 132 British service personnel have died in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003. The US death toll stands at 3,148 whilst the Lancet estimated the Iraqi civilian death toll since 2003 to be over 650,000.

Labour MP John McDonnell, the only declared candidate to succeed Mr Blair as party leader, said the withdrawal was "too little, too late".

reference=http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2018014,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=11