British garrison gets ready for retreat from Basra

The controversial withdrawal will involve a massive security operation to protect the troops, with insurgent groups expected to launch attacks to try to show they are chasing the soldiers out.

Some U.S. commanders have claimed that the British have lost the military struggle in southern Iraq and warn that their own troops may have to be sent in if the city descends into all-out civil war.

The Ministry of Defence insist the Army is

making progress in Basra, but privately commanders admit they are achieving nothing by maintaining the garrison at Basra Palace - one of Saddam Hussein's former residences on the banks of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway - where troops face constant rocket and mortar attacks.

MPs from the Defence Select Committee who visited Basra Palace described the UK garrison as 'surrounded like cowboys and Indians', and said supply convoys were little more than 'nightly suicide missions'.

The 500 troops from the 4th Battalion The Rifles will pull back from the Palace to join the other 5,000 British personnel at their last base in Iraq at Basra Airport, a few miles outside the city. That site, too, is often under mortar and rocket attack.

The MoD will not say exactly when Basra Palace will be evacuated on security grounds. However, when the soldiers do leave, they will have to do so rapidly with thousands more deployed to protect them.

A defence insider said: 'A withdrawal on that scale within the city of Basra obviously involves a level of vulnerability.'

The UK presence in Iraq will fall to around 5,000 after the Basra Palace pull

out. Ministers have told MPs that the figure cannot be reduced further until the final retreat from Iraq, because the UK force must be big enough to protect its own base and send a sizeable force back on to the streets in an emergency.

The MoD insists the Iraqi police and army are increasingly capable of running Basra themselves.

This claim has been disputed by experts in the field who say many Iraqi police officers were taking part in sectarian violence. Ministers are under pressure to push ahead with the withdrawal because the Army is struggling to cope with wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the U.S., there was more pressure on President Bush to change course in Iraq after a senior Republican broke ranks to demand that troops should start returning home by Christmas.

Senator John Warner, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. needed to send a powerful message-that its commitment in Iraq was not open-ended. He urged the White House to start by bringing home 5,000 soldiers.

General Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, is also expected to recommend cuts in troop levels in Iraq because the armed services are overstretched.

Yesterday a U.S. intelligence report said Iraqi leaders had failed to govern effectively and that the violence will get worse over the next 12 months.