LONDON — Britain will cut its forces in Iraq by about half in the spring, shrinking the commitment of America's leading military partner to just 2,500 troops whose engagement will be limited mainly to training Iraqi forces, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday.
The proposed withdrawal goes much further than the reduction of 1,000 troops that the prime minister announced in Baghdad last week. It also sets the stage for Britain's exit as an active combat participant in the still-troubled region of southern Iraq where its troops are based.
U.S. officials said that the move was consistent with plans Britain previously had announced to reduce the size of a force that once numbered more than 40,000 soldiers. U.S. generals have said publicly that there is little the British can do to resolve the main conflict in the south, an internal power struggle among Shiite Muslim factions.
But privately, some U.S. officials complain that the new prime minister is abdicating his country's role in the war because it is politically expedient. The war is deeply unpopular in Britain.
"We will continue to be actively engaged in Iraq's political and economic development. We will continue to assist the Iraqi government and its security forces to help build their capabilities -- military, civilian and economic -- so that they can take full responsibility for the security of their own country," Brown told the House of Commons.
The strategy he laid out was a departure from that of his predecessor, Tony Blair, whom he replaced in June. Brown called for Britain to move progressively out of active combat into a staged "overwatch" role in Iraq, with only "limited" capability for "re-intervention" after spring.
Brown said there were 5,500 British troops in Iraq at the beginning of September.
The British contingent remains the largest of the foreign forces allied with the U.S. military in Iraq, but the overall number has dropped from about 50,000 in 2003 to less than 12,000 now. U.S. troops make up 93% of the total foreign force. U.S. forces, which have been concentrated in Baghdad and other conflict-ridden regions to the north, have relied on British forces to guard southern Iraq, a region that includes some of the nation's biggest oil fields, its only access to the sea, 200 miles of its long border with Iran and the main supply line from Kuwait.
