London/Baghdad - Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced during a visit to Iraq Tuesday that 1,000 British troops would be home by Christmas and confirmed that security control for Basra province will be handed over to the Iraqis within the next two months.
Brown made the announcement during his first visit to Iraq since he became prime minister at the end of June. Soon after his arrival in Baghdad early Tuesday, Brown held talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other senior politicians. He also visited the British base in Basra.
'We are prepared to take over security of Basra within two months and we will,' al-Maliki told reporters in Baghdad after the meeting. He also urged Brown to support Iraq's stand against efforts in the US Senate to promote the division of Iraq along ethnic lines.
'We call on your support against any division that doesn't serve Iraq and the region,' al-Maliki said.
Brown also discussed economic regeneration Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, and had talks with the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus.
However, Iraq's former Oil Minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Oloum, criticized the British decision saying it was 'too early to discuss a major British troop withdrawal from Basra.'
Iraqi forces were not yet ready to take over security responsibility for the southern provinces, he said.
His concerns were echoed by Richard Jones, Britain's consul- general in Basra, who told the BBC that the local police force in the city had been 'infiltrated by hard-line Shia militias.'
There was a widespread fear that instability would grow in Basra after a British withdrawal, Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the University of London, said Tuesday.
'It is hell on earth down there,' said Dodge, predicting a 'struggle for power between three militias and criminal gangs.'
Brown said the Iraqis now had 13,000 troops and 15,000 police in southern Iraq, most of them trained by the British.
Despite the cut in numbers, British troops would maintain the capability to intervene in support of Iraqi security forces if needed, he said.
His pledge to withdraw 1,000 of the 5,500 British troops by the end of this year came amid media reports that by next spring, 2,000 British soldiers would have returned home.
Brown had originally been planning to make announcements about troop levels during a statement to parliament next Monday, but was clearly bounced into revealing some of the news early, amid continuing speculation in Britain that he will call a general election for early November.
Commentators in London said Tuesday that Brown had intended to go much further in his announcements, but was prevented from doing so by US objections.
A major difference between the positions of the US military and British forces was that London believed that the militia in Iraq should be 'part of the solution' to the country's intricate problems, defence expert Robert Fox said.
The British government had discussed a 'number of radical options' for southern Iraq in recent weeks, of which one was to withdraw forces from Basra altogether and move them to the relative safety of the a US and an Australian base elsewhere, the BBC reported.
Another option had been to withdraw troops to a base inside Kuwait. Both options, though being rejected, would have allowed significant troop reductions, experts said.
As it is, British troops were likely to stay in Iraq for another two years. At present, Britain still has 5,500 soldiers in Iraq.
In early September, the last of the British contingent moved out of headquarters in Basra city centre to the international airport on the outskirts, following almost daily attacks on patrols.
The number of casualties has dropped significantly since then. A total of 169 British soldiers have died since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but there have been no reported fatalities since September 8.
Brown has said Britain will 'fulfil its international obligations' in Iraq, but an announcement of troop cuts would be politically popular and signal a break with previous Iraq policy under Tony Blair.
