President Jalal Talabani said that within a year Iraqi troops would be able to take over the role of security in southern Iraq, where the British are based. It is the first time that a senior Iraqi politician has put a tentative date on Britain’s pull-out.

However, General Sir Mike Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff, who has recently watched the new Iraqi Army training with British troops, advised caution about putting a date on any withdrawal. “The President has said that we could leave within a year or so. I would agree that we most certainly could, but it’s a question of achieving the right conditions,” he told Andrew Marr Sunday AM on BBC One.

John Reid, the Defence Secretary, said President Talabani’s prediction was “entirely consistent with our aims”: “We will stay in Iraq until the job is done and the Iraqis are able to provide their own security. This process of handover to the Iraqis is one which could begin in the course of the coming year.”

The Iraqi President’s remarks on the ITV’s Jonathan Dimbleby programme are in line with an assessment of the progress the Iraqi Army is making in shouldering an increasing amount of the security responsibilities in the south. In central Iraq, where most of the insurgency is being fought, few of the Iraqi units are capable yet of operating without the back-up of the Americans.

British troops are training Iraq’s 10th Division, based in Basra. Under existing plans, the aim is to hand over more and more of the security tasks to the Iraqis in the four provinces in the south, allowing Britain’s force, part of the Multinational Division Southeast, to withdraw to barracks and then pull out in a phased programme.

Defence sources said that the prediction did not mean there would a “big bang” withdrawal of all British troops at the end of next year. The process would take time and the Iraqi 10th Division, which is commanded by General Abdul Latif, would need to be better equipped.

At present, it is largely a “lorry-born” force, with no helicopters, a few T72 tanks supplied by Hungary and some armoured personnel carriers.

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