Iraq says needs foreign troops for 1-2 years

CAMBRIDGE (Reuters) - Iraq will need U.S. and British troops for another year or two and the U.S. Congress should reconsider its votes to cut off funding before then, President Jalal Talabani said on Friday.

"I think in one or two years we will be able to recruit our own army forces and say goodbye to our friends," the president told students in a lecture at Cambridge University.

He later told reporters he hoped the U.S. Congress would reconsider votes to set a deadline for withdrawing troops.

"We are concerned," he said. "We hope that Congress will review this decision and will be ready -- to train them and to protect the state of Iraq."

U.S. President George W. Bush vetoed a $124 billion (63 billion pound) war funding bill last week because it set a deadline for the withdrawal of combat troops, but the U.S. House of Representatives passed a new bill on Thursday that provides only enough money to continue combat for two or three months.

U.S. Democrats and some Republicans say Iraq's Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government must reach out to minority Sunni Arabs and reduce sectarian violence if it wants U.S. forces to stay.

Talabani, a veteran Kurdish leader, said the government was determined to show progress.

"We are doing our best to have real political achievement in reconciliation," he said.

"We are planning to have all the partners in the government, in decision making, and to show tangible achievements to the Congress that we are going forward toward the reconciliation."

The Iraqi president visited Britain the day after Prime Minister Tony Blair announced he would resign in June.

BLAIR A "HERO"

Talabani praised Blair, who along with U.S. President George W. Bush toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and put Talabani's government in power, as a "hero of Iraq's liberation".

He said he had never met Blair's presumed successor, finance minister Gordon Brown, but had heard he was a "clever man" and expected him to continue Blair's policy of support for his government.

But earlier on Friday Brown hinted that he could change British policy toward Iraq, saying mistakes had been made there.

"I do think that over the next few months the emphasis will shift. We've got to concentrate more on political reconciliation in Iraq, we've got to concentrate more on economic development," Brown told a news conference.

Talabani said he agreed mistakes had been made in Iraq -- he singled out the decision to impose an initial U.S.-led occupation for 14 months after the invasion before setting up a sovereign Iraqi government.

But he insisted Western media had exaggerated the degree of violence in his country and the potential for ethnic and sectarian war.

"There is no danger of civil war or fighting between Shi'ites and Sunnis in Iraq," he said.