US Accepts Polish Iraq Withdrawal
The United States has accepted Poland's plans to pull most of its 1,700 troops from Iraq at the beginning of next year, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said on Monday.
Poland, one of Washington's biggest European allies in Iraq, runs a multi-national stabilisation zone south of Baghdad. "The current (six-month troop) rotation in Iraq will be the last one. By the end of January we would like to pull the troops and replace them with smaller groups, which could for example help train the Iraqi army," Kwasniewski told public radio.
"(Our plans that) the shift ending its mission in January is the last one have been accepted by the allies and were the subject of talks between Defence Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski and U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld (on July 19)."
Kwasniewski said he wanted to leave setting an exact withdrawal schedule for the next government and president, to be picked in elections due in September and October.
The centre-right opposition, tipped to win parliamentary elections, has supported Poland's presence in Iraq and accused the ruling leftists of pledging to withdraw only to drum up its support ratings ahead of the polls.