Brown pays visit to Iraq

By Adrian Croft

BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown paid an unannounced visit on Sunday to the troops whose mission he is winding down in Shi'ite southern Iraq.

South of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed the police chief of Babel province, showing Shi'ite areas remain violent despite an overall reduction in bloodshed across Iraq.

Brown visited the last major outpost of British troops at an air base outside the city of Basra and said Britain would hand over responsibility within weeks for security in Basra province, the last of four it once patrolled in southern Iraq.

Britain now has just 4,500 troops in Iraq -- a tenth of the force that Tony Blair dispatched in 2003 to help the United States topple Saddam Hussein.

The British force is expected to be cut to 2,500 by mid-2008, leaving just a token foreign presence in the vast Shi'ite south of Iraq, even as Washington has sent an extra 30,000 troops this year to northern and central areas.

"The reason why security is so much better here, the reason why things have improved, is because of you, because of what you've achieved," Brown told troops assembled on the base.

Since withdrawing to the air base in September, British forces have faced few attacks.

But in a sign of how precarious the dwindling British presence is, journalists travelling with Brown were not permitted to report his visit until he was safely out of Iraq.