Brown rejects call for troops to leave Iraq

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown rejected on Tuesday a call to pull troops out of Iraq, insisting they still had an important job to do battling militias and providing security.

In an open letter to an opposition party leader, he argued it was wrong to say the continued presence of British troops would achieve little, or to say that they were severely restricted in what they can do.

"UK forces in Basra continue to have the capability to strike against the militias and provide overall security," he said in the letter to Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats, who opposed the Iraq war.

Campbell had called for a timetable to pull out, saying casualty levels were now unacceptable, but Brown said this would "undermine our international obligations, as well as hindering ... our armed forces and increasing the risks they face".

"They will continue to work with the Iraqi authorities and security forces to get them to the point where they can assume full responsibility for security," Brown wrote.

Britain has around 5,000 soldiers in Iraq, stationed mostly in the south, in and around the second city of Basra.

Some 2,200 troops have pulled out in the past year, and British generals are gearing up to pull out of the last city base in Basra in the coming months -- partly because some feel their presence there is making the security situation worse.

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