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Resistance level unexpected: Blair

Hasan Suroor

Iraq dogs Labour Party meet; Prime Minister denies time-table for troop withdrawal

LONDON: The political row over Iraq loomed large ahead of the Labour Party's annual conference, starting in Brighton on Monday, after Prime Minister Tony Blair ruled out an "arbitrary'' deadline for withdrawing British troops.

He denied a Sunday newspaper report that the Government had drawn up "detailed plans'' on major withdrawal from Iraq next May. Mr. Blair's remarks in a BBC interview provoked anger among the party's anti-war activists who planned to move a motion calling for pull out.

Mr. Blair insisted that the forces would stay "as long as it takes to build up the capability of Iraqi forces''.

U.N. mandate

"What we do depends on the job being done. There is no arbitrary date that's being set and the allies are all exactly in the same position. Our mandate there from the U.N. is to stay there for as long as the Iraqi Government want us and as long as it takes to build up the capability of the Iraqi forces,'' he told BBC's Sunday AM which has replaced Breakfast with Frost.

Mr. Blair blamed the deteriorating situation in Iraq on "terrorists'' who were trying to destabilise the political process ahead of December's elections.

He admitted that he had not expected the "ferocity'' of the resistance.

The Observer newspaper claimed that Britain had already "privately informed'' Japan of its plans to begin withdrawing from southern Iraq in May.

"The document being drawn up by the British Government and the U.S. will be presented to the Iraqi Parliament in October...

Hope of progress

Tony Blair hopes that despite continuing and widespread violence in Iraq, the move will show that there is progress following the conflict of 2003,'' it said.

The newspaper reported senior military sources as saying the document would lay out a "point-by-point'' road map for the withdrawal of multinational forces from Iraq.

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