According to a secret blueprint agreed with allies, Britain plans to withdraw its troops from Iraq by this spring.
The British government’s plan to withdraw its 2,000 troops deployed in Iraq will start with initially pulling 500 soldiers from southern Iraq by the end of May, according to Whitehall source.
UK withdrawal plan will start with initially pulling 500 troops from southern Iraq
By the end of the year, under a schedule revealed at a meeting of military commanders and diplomats last month, Britain will complete withdrawing all its 2,000 soldiers in Iraq.
On the other hand, Japan revealed plans to pull its troops out of southern Iraq within the coming months, according to media reports quoting a senior government official, The Associated Press reported.
This is the first time that a senior official publicly gives a timeframe for the troops' withdrawal, Kyodo News agency reported, quoting Kyoji Yanagisawa, the assistant deputy chief Cabinet secretary.
Yanagisawa made his remarks during a speech in Tokyo, during which he also said that finding an "exit from Iraq is this year's biggest theme. At any rate, (Japan's Self-Defense Force) will withdraw within several months."
The Whitehall source confirmed that the meeting of British military commanders took place in London on 23 January. During that meeting, Britain, the U.S., Australia and Japan agreed to co-ordinate troop withdrawals from Iraq. Most of the Australian and Japanese troops in the country are in the four provinces of south-eastern Iraq which are under British command, The Independent reported.
According to Adam Price MP, a leading critic of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s policies in Iraq, who helped expose the secret blueprint, says that a partial withdrawal from the war-torn and violence-ravaged country could simply expose the remaining troops to more danger.
"The experience of Afghanistan teaches us the dangers of these so-called staged withdrawals," he said. "A reduced force is left incapable of delivering security to either themselves or the Iraqis while leaving the 'insurgents' with a symbolic target."
British Defence Secretary, spelled out yesterday the terms for the start of the withdrawal of the British troops from Iraq. However he said that UK would not "cut and run" from the country.
In a speech to the Foreign Press Association in London, Reid said "the time is approaching" when the occupation forces could begin leaving Iraq, setting four conditions he says must be met before any withdrawal could begin.
Also British defence chiefs will hold a meeting in March on troop deployments.
Last week, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso denied reports that Japan will pull out from Iraq by May, arguing that Japan is committed to its mission there which is “bringing security back to the country.
Aso's rejection of withdrawal reports followed a report by Kyodo saying that Japan will start withdrawing its 600 troops from Samawah, Iraq, in March, and complete its pullout in May at about the same time that UK and Australia pull out their troops.
Kyodo confirmed the agreement between diplomats and defense officials from Australia, Britain, Japan and the United States reached during the secret meeting in London.
There has been widespread speculation that the U.S. President, now facing diminishing approval ratings as well as fading allies’ support in Iraq war, might decide to begin pulling U.S. forces from Iraq in 2006.
In a speech on November 19th last year, the U.S. President George W. Bush repeated the latest Administration catchphrase: “As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” “When our commanders on the ground tell me that Iraqi forces can defend their freedom, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.”
The U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quoted earlier as telling Fox News that the current level of American troops would not have to be maintained “for very much longer,” claiming that the reason is because the Iraqis are better at fighting the “insurgency”.
An editorial published last December on The New Yorker, quoted a Pentagon war planner as asserting that Mr. Bush would authorize a significant pullout of American troops if he believed that “it would impede the war against the 'insurgency'”.
The past few weeks witnessed a surge in violence and rise in sectarian and ethnic conflict between Iraq’s Sunnis and Shias, which contradicts the American leaders’ repeated claims.
Several proposals are currently being reviewed by the White House and the Pentagon; mostly calling for American forces deployed in Iraq to be reduced from a hundred and fifty-five thousand troops to fewer than eighty thousand by next fall, The New Yorker added.
The planner was also quoted as saying that “the drawdown plans that I’m familiar with are condition-based, event-driven, and not in a specific time frame”—again, meaning, that withdrawing troops from Iraq depend on the local forces’ and the new government’s ability to handle the country’s security.