Britain will announce next week that it is sending up to 3,000 more troops to Iraq in an attempt to restore order before next month's handover of power to an interim Iraqi government, The Times reported yesterday.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair will argue that the reinforcements are part of an exit strategy, which focuses on accelerating the training of Iraqi military to take over on June 30, the newspaper said.
"The force of Royal Marines and an armored infantry battle group will be sent to an area of volatile southern Iraq recently vacated by Spanish troops," it said.
The area includes the holy city of Najaf, where radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has been holed up for more than a month with his militia in defiance of US-led forces.
The Times said armed forces' chiefs would finalize reinforcement plans this week, with an announcement to follow next week. Britain currently has 7,900 troops occupying southern Iraq, with headquarters in Basra.
Blair, speaking on Monday in Ankara, said British troops would stay in Iraq until "the job is done" and insisted he would not bow to criticism over the US-led coalition's handling of the situation there.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, when asked about Iraq reinforcements in a BBC interview yesterday, responded with the stock government reply.
"There have been discussions about additional troop numbers," he said.
"When and if a final decision is made in respect to further troop numbers, then the secretary of state for defense, Geoff Hoon, will make that announcement to the House of Commons," he said.
The Pentagon announced on Monday that the US will withdraw some 3,600 troops from South Korea for up to a year's combat duty in Iraq, the first reduction in US force levels on the Korean peninsula since the early 1990s.
The worsening security situation in Iraq was highlighted on Monday by the the death of the head of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Ezzedine Salim, in a Baghdad car bomb suicide attack.
The Times' report was the third so far this month about an impending rise in British troop numbers.
On May 6, the Sun newspaper said that Britain would send 800 Royal Marine commandos, among other troops, back to Iraq to replace Spanish forces being withdrawn from the country.
It said that 40 commandos of the Royal Marines, one of the British units that took part in the US-led invasion of Iraq in March last year, would spearhead reinforcements that will also include a unit of the elite Special Boat Service.
It added that the troops would be tasked with regaining control of the city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, where militia loyal to the wanted Shiite cleric, Sadr, have clashed with coalition forces.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS