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British troops to leave Iraq by June 2009

LONDON: Britain is to start withdrawing its remaining troops from Iraq next March with the last of the forces likely to be back home by June, ending six year of British occupation of southern Iraq, according to media reports quoting military sources.

They would be replaced by “several thousand” U.S. troops as part of an agreement between the U.S. and Iraq.

A timetable is expected to be announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown probably after the provincial Iraqi elections on January 31.

Plans for a March pullout could be derailed if elections are not peaceful. Britain has a little over 4,000 troops in Basra, a majority confined to an airbase.

While some are likely to be diverted to Afghanistan where NATO troops are struggling to keep the Taliban at bay, a few hundred may remain in Iraq to train Iraqi security forces.

The BBC said Britain was negotiating the legal basis on which its forces can stay when its U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said that “significant progress” had been made in Basra claiming that the city had been “transformed thanks to Iraqi, coalition and British efforts.”

“As such, we are now expecting to see a fundamental change of mission in early 2009,” she said.

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