CALLS to set an early date for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq were heavily defeated by Labour Party delegates after hearing an impassioned appeal from an Iraqi Kurd refugee.

Shanaz Rashid, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, pleaded for Iraq not to be deserted in its hour of need and said that she did not understand criticism of Tony Blair for toppling Saddam Hussein.

Her speech followed behind-the-scenes agreements with the big unions to avoid a confrontation over plans for the future of Iraq in a show of Labour unity designed to help to heal bitter divisions in the party over the case for war. A core of party members pressed the case for a timetable for troop withdrawal but were defeated on a card vote with 80 per cent of local parties and 90 per cent of trade unions voting against.

Ms Rashid spent 30 years in exile in Surrey and her husband is a minister in the Iraqi interim Government. She told delegates: “Please, please do not desert us in our hour of need. Do not let the men of violence use terror to deny the Iraqi people their freedom.”

Close to tears, Ms Rashid said that her friends and relatives had died under Saddam’s rule and she had kissed the ground with joy on arriving back in Baghdad after the war. “Some of you may feel you can attack your leader over Iraq, but it is Mr Blair who has stood up to Saddam and freed my people,” she said.

“Yes, there have been difficulties. Yes, there have been mistakes, perhaps many mistakes. No, you did not find weapons of mass destruction. But for the great majority of Iraqis WMD was never the issue. We do not understand the criticism of your Prime Minister. All we wanted was to be free.”

She added: “I appeal to you all . . . to help us to build a new democratic federal Iraq that would respect the lives of human beings.”

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, gave warnings against unilaterally leaving Iraq. Mr Hoon said: “We cannot abandon the Iraqi people now. We must stay the course and see the job through. What our Armed Forces are doing today is essential to improving the lives of the Iraqi people.”

Mr Straw told delegates: “Yes, the terrorists have killed foreigners, kidnapped others, still hold Kenneth Bigley but overwhelmingly the targets are the Iraqi economy and the victims are ordinary, decent Iraqis who want the chance to rebuild their country and who are being stopped, not by US or UK forces but by these evil men who, knowing that they cannot succeed by ballot, seek to impose their will by bullet and by bomb.”

Ms Rashid was followed on the rostrum by Marian Grimes, from Edinburgh, who backed the “troops out” motion. She said: “We need to have the courage to pull out the troops, not immediately, but sooner rather than later.”

Carolyn Manson, from Glasgow, said Britain was behaving like a bully in Iraq. “The UK has WMD, loads of WMD. So it is even more important that we do not bully a nation which has none,” she said.

The motion was proposed by Pat Healy, of Streatham, who said: “Some people argue that withdrawal will lead to a bloodbath. But the bloodbath is already happening. It is unfortunate but a fact that British Forces in Iraq are now part of the problem, not the solution.”

Alice Mahon, MP for Halifax, backed the withdrawal motion and said that delegates were living in a bubble if they believed that things were getting better on the ground in Iraq. “Iraq is attracting every terrorist from all around the world and it is getting worse,” she said. “The rest of the country can see that. It is in front of them on their television screens every day.

Delegates backed a statement from Labour’s National Executive Committee saying that British troops would remain “only at the request of the Iraqi Government”. The statement noted that there was a timetable in UN Security Council resolution 1546 that said that the “UN mandate for the multinational forces will terminate by December 2005”. Troops could stay only if the elected Iraqi Government renewed its request.

Shahid Malik, an NEC member, said he had opposed the war in Iraq because he did not believe that Iraq was an imminent threat. He added: “But we did go to war and now is not the time to desert the people of Iraq. They would not forgive us.” The West had turned a blind eye to Saddam Hussein’s atrocities in the past and now had a moral responsibility to establish peace, he said.

Labour managers took no chances with the staging of the debate, ensuring that on-message MPs were placed strategically around the hall to applaud those backing the NEC position.

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