LONDON -- Britain will cut its force in Iraq by half in the spring, shrinking the commitment of the United States' leading military partner to 2,500 troops, most of them engaged mainly in training Iraqi forces, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said yesterday.
The announcement goes much further than a reduction of 1,000 troops that the prime minister announced last week in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, and it sets the stage for Britain's departure as an active combat participant in the troubled region of southern Iraq, where its troops are based.
U.S. officials said the move is consistent with plans Britain had previously announced to reduce the size of a force that once numbered 40,000 soldiers. U.S. generals have said publicly that there is little the British can do to resolve the main conflict in the south, an internal power struggle among Shiite factions.
Privately, however, some U.S. officials say the new prime minister is reducing his country's role in the war, which is deeply unpopular in Britain, because it is politically expedient.
"We will continue to be actively engaged in Iraq's political and economic development. We will continue to assist the Iraqi government and its security forces to help build their capabilities - military, civilian and economic - so that they can take full responsibility for the security of their own country," Brown told the House of Commons.
The strategy he laid out was a departure from that of Tony Blair, whom he replaced as prime minister in June. Brown called for Britain to move away from combat into an "overwatch" role in Iraq, with limited capability for "re-intervention" after the spring.
The British contingent remains the largest of the coalition forces allied with the U.S. military in Iraq, but the number of British troops has dropped from about 50,000 in 2003 to fewer than 12,000.
U.S. troops make up 93 percent of the coalition force. While U.S. forces have been bogged down in Baghdad and other conflict-ridden regions to the north, they have relied on British forces to guard southern Iraq, a region that includes some of the nation's biggest oil fields, its only access to the sea, 200 miles of its long border with Iran and the main supply line from Kuwait.
Brown's government faces increasingly vociferous opposition to the war at home. In a YouGov poll this year, 30 percent of respondents said they wanted British troops out as soon as possible, and 40 percent said they wanted a withdrawal within 18 months.
