Britain prepares for pull-out from Iraq by 1 January
Britain's military commanders have been forced to prepare for a withdrawal from Iraq in eight days after the country's parliament put off a vote that would allow UK troops to stay beyond the end of the year.
Failure to resolve the issue before the current UN mandate runs out on 31 December would mean that 6,000 non-US troops would have no legal basis to stay in Iraq from 1 January.
US troops are governed by a separate agreement which allows them to remain until 2011.
The vote was put off amid chaos in parliament. Shia and Kurdish lawmakers called for the speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, to resign after he failed to control a shouting match over the journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush during a press conference.
Iraqi government lawyers are believed to be working on a "Plan B" that would bypass parliament and give prime minister Nouri Maliki the opportunity to act. But this too needs parliamentary approval, and Western officials fear this will not work. There is a further complication, as no session of the Iraq parliament is on the diary until 7 January.
Defence Secretary John Hutton insisted today that the failure of the Iraqi parliament to approve the draft law was no more than "a minor hiccup".
Mr Hutton said he remained confident that a deal would be reached, as the government in Baghdad is keen for Britain to stay until Gordon Brown's 31 July deadline for withdrawal.
But he revealed that contingency plans are in place to deal with the possibility that no agreement is sealed by 1 January, when the current United Nations mandate runs out.
He declined to discuss details of the plans, but said they would mean no British soldiers going out onto the streets of Iraq.
Asked what will happen if no agreement is in place by the New Year, Mr Hutton said: "That would be a very serious situation, and obviously we couldn't let it happen, but I don't think it will happen.
"Prime minister Maliki has made it very clear to Gordon Brown and to me that he wants UK forces to continue in a role into the New Year and beyond."
