All British troops will be out of Iraq by the end of next year, a senior Iraqi official said yesterday, ending a mission that began with the invasion of 2003.

Muwafaq al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, also said that talks on a deal between Baghdad and London on the status of Britain’s remaining 4,100 troops had begun and would be relatively straightforward compared with the agreement with the US.

Both London and Washington must seal agreements with the Iraqis before the end of 2008, when a United Nations mandate authorising the presence of their forces in the country is due to expire. The countdown seems to have begun for the conclusion of Britain’s military effort.

“By the end of next year there will be no British troops in Iraq,” Mr al-Rubaie confirmed to The Times. Negotiations on the pullout started a fortnight ago, he added.

In response, the Ministry of Defence denied that there was a fixed schedule for the withdrawal of British forces, which are largely based on an airbase outside the main southern Iraqi city of Basra.

“At the minute, we have no timetable,” an official said. “We are hopefully making progress, we have made progress in Basra, and we are on course to meet the Prime Minister’s fundamental change of mission in 2009.” Gordon Brown is expected to cut troop numbers next year to only a few hundred personnel.

Mr al-Rubaie told AFP that the agreement between Iraq and Britain was much shorter than a text outlining the role of the United States’ 146,000-strong military deployment.

In Basra, people said that they would be glad to see the back of British forces, whom they blame for allowing Shia militiamen to flourish after the 2003 invasion. Basra was only brought back under Iraqi government control in April. “The British did nothing for us or to Basra, they should withdraw as soon as possible,” Mohammed Abed Ali, a 44-year-old lawyer, said.

Another man, who declined to be named, said that he hoped US troops would take over from the British soldiers when they went because he did not think the Iraqi authorities were ready to be left on their own.

Turning to the US-Iraq security accord, Mr al-Rubaie predicted that the Iraqi Cabinet would approve the document over the weekend.

“This text will secure the complete, full, irrevocable sovereignty of Iraq,” he said.

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