Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Britain's armed forces are in danger of exhaustion and should aim to leave Iraq "in a year or two or three," Chief of the General Staff General Richard Dannatt said, shedding light on the timetable for a withdraw.

In a series of broadcast and print interviews, the U.K.'s top army commander said troops in the region are exacerbating security problems around the globe and in danger of overstretching themselves if they stay too long.

"I want to see this campaign successfully concluded," Dannatt said in a Sky News interview. "I also want make sure that I've got an army that is not so exhausted, that it's still there and can do the job in five years time and 10 years time."

The comments are among the first on the record to suggest when Britain and the U.S. would withdraw from the region. In August, two British officials with knowledge of the matter said the U.K. would cut its force in half within the next year. Prime Minister Tony Blair has said only that there would be a "significant" drawdown in 2007.

Britain currently has about 7,200 soldiers in Iraq and 5,600 in Afghanistan. Dannatt's comments suggest government may be preparing for an earlier pull out, opposition parties said.

"If you take Richard Dannatt's comments at face value, he is talking months, not years, as the length of time before British troops withdraw from Iraq," said Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, Britain's third largest.

Opposition View

The main opposition Conservative Party, which supported Blair on the war in Iraq, called for the government to make its plans in the region clear.

"We need urgent clarification now from ministers about whether there has been any change in the Government's position," said Liam Fox, the Conservative Party's lawmaker in charge of defense issues.

Support is waning among the British public for the deployment in Iraq as casualties mount and Blair's popularity has suffered since the invasion. Since the war began in March 2003, 119 British troops have died in Iraq. The U.K. has the second- largest force after in Iraq the U.S. British troops also are fighting in Afghanistan and are deployed in Bosnia and Kosovo.

An ICM Ltd. poll published Oct. 8 showed that 54 percent of Britons interviewed said the troops should be withdrawn from Iraq this year.

No Rift With Blair

Dannatt, who became the army chief in August, said in an interview with BBC Radio 4 that his comments didn't indicate a rift either with government or Blair. He said he discussed his comments with the Defense Secretary Des Browne in a telephone call last night.

"The original intention was that we put in place a liberal democracy that was an exemplar for the region, was pro-West and might have a beneficial effect on the balance within the Middle East," Dannatt told the Daily Mail. "That was the hope, whether that was a sensible or naïve hope history will judge. I don't think we are going to do that. I think we should aim for a lower ambition."

Dannatt also said the U.S. "is our key ally in all of this" and "their timing and our timing will be one and the same."

On Sky News, he denied that Iraqi insurgents were defeating British troops, though he said the presence of U.K. forces makes them a target in some areas.

"It is undoubtedly a fact that in certain places, in certain parts of the country, because we are there we are attacked," he told Sky News.

The U.K. has turned over control of security in two provinces to Iraqi forces and is in the process of changing over in a third. Defense officials in London said in July that the U.K. plans to reduce the size of its force patrolling Basra and other parts of southern Iraq to between 3,000 and 4,000.

"They are sitting on the second largest supply, remaining supply, of the world's oil," Dannatt said on BBC Radio 4. "If they can't make a go of that country, it's a real shame."

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Lysaght in London at blysaght@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: October 13, 2006 06:18 EDT

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