A clear majority of voters want British troops to be pulled out of Iraq by the end of this year, regardless of the consequences for the country, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today.

A British soldier makes a V-sign at a checkpoint in Basra. Photograph: Atef Hassan/Reuters

In a sign that public opinion is hardening against Britain's military presence in Iraq, 61% of voters say they want British troops to leave this year, even if they have not completed their mission and Washington wants them to stay.

Only 30% now back the prime minister's commitment to keep troops in Iraq as long as is considered necessary.

Almost half of those questioned - 45% - want British forces pulled out immediately and a further 16% want them to leave by the end of the year, whether or not the US asks the British government to keep them on. When the Guardian last questioned voters on the issue in September 2005, 51% backed troop withdrawal with 41% arguing that British forces should stay in Iraq until the security situation in the country had improved.

The findings came as Iraq's deputy prime minister, in Downing Street for talks with Tony Blair yesterday, said the UK and US could not "cut and run ... and leave the Iraqis to face these difficult challenges on our own". Barham Salih, expressed concern about the mood of pessimism gripping Europe and the US, but he acknowledged that his own country needed to move faster towards more responsibility for security.

No 10 is insisting that it will not set a fixed timetable for withdrawal of troops, but there are growing signs of plans to scale back, with defence secretary Des Browne and foreign minister Kim Howells predicting that Iraq would have the capacity within a year to take over from British forces.

The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, admitted yesterday that Iraqis may eventually choose to partition the country rather than carry on as a single state.

"That is very much a matter for the Iraqis. They have had enough of people from outside handing down arbitrary boundaries and arbitrary decisions," she told BBC Radio 4's The World At One.

Asked if historians may judge that Iraq had been a foreign policy disaster for Britain, she said: "Yes, they may. Then again, they may not."

The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, called for a parliamentary debate soon to assess whether British troops should pull out.

Ministry of Defence and senior British military commanders are now signalling that the number of British troops in Iraq will be cut significantly by early next year.

Major General Richard Shirreff, the British commander in southern Iraq, said yesterday that the planning assumption was that there could be what he called a "reasonable reduction" in the 7,000-strong force in southern Iraq at the end of the current operation designed to rid Basra of serious criminals and corrupt officials. Operation Sinbad, involving about 3,000 British troops and Iraqi forces, is expected to finish in February.

In a little-noticed report to the Commons defence committee, the MoD said at the end of last week that the Iraqi army would be in a position to take over responsibility for security in southern Iraq by the end of this year. "The 10th Division of the Iraqi army [covering southern Iraq] will be fully operational by December 2006 and the intention is to have transferred operational command to the Iraqi ground forces command by this date," the MoD says.

Senior defence officials say the total number of British troops in Iraq could be cut by as much as half by next summer.

That timetable, however, may still depend on the reaction of US commanders concerned about the impact at home and abroad of a significant British pullout.

The ICM poll carried out last weekend, suggests particularly strong support for early troop withdrawal among women and young voters, with 51% of women voters wanting troops pulled out now and only 24% backing them staying beyond Christmas.

ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,019 adults aged 18+ by telephone on October 20-22. Interviews were conducted around the country and have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

© Copyright 2006 Guardian News and Media Limited

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