Basra handover "completed"
Tony Blair met British troops in Basra last December
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Sunday, 18, Feb 2007 06:36
British troops in Basra have successfully completed transferring frontline security duties to the Iraqi army, the prime minister has said.
But when quizzed on newspaper reports that the number of UK soldiers in the Middle East would be halved in the coming weeks, Tony Blair's response was "let's wait and see".
Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, told parliament in January that Mr Blair would make an official announcement as soon as the security handover in southern Iraq had been completed.
And speaking to BBC1's Sunday AM programme today, the prime minister said: "The issue is the operation that we have been conducting in Basra is now complete and that operation has specifically been to put the Iraqi forces in the main frontline control of security within the city.
"It's actually been successful as an operation and as a result of that there's reconstruction that's come in behind it and we've been able to make real progress."
He explained that the "scaling down" was a culmination of a gradual process of handing over responsibility to Iraqi security forces.
But he cautioned that Britain still had an obligation to ensure it had "sufficient forces in support and in reserve to be able to help the Iraqis if a particular problem arises".
The UK still has 7,000 troops stationed in and around Basra, almost four years after the invasion of Iraq.