Basra Clash Spurs War Foes in Britain

Last week’s videotape showing a British soldier leaping from his tank, his uniform in flames, after being attacked by protesters in Iraq may prove to be an iconic moment for Britons, as powerful in their psyche as images of the charred bodies of four U.S. contractors hanging from the bridge in Fallouja were to Americans.

As Prime Minister Tony Blair goes into his annual Labor Party conference today, the apparent rising hostility to the British presence in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, along with a recent upturn in British military deaths, is reigniting the debate over whether it is time to pull out Britain’s 8,500 troops.

The British force is the second largest in Iraq, behind the 135,000 troops from the United States.

“After a brief absence from British politics, Iraq has returned to center stage,” said Michael Portillo, the former Conservative Party defense secretary, writing in the Sunday Times here.

He cited the Basra incident, in which two British commandos were seized by Iraqi police and, according to British accounts, turned over to a local militia until fellow soldiers launched a military operation and won their release.

The rescue was popular in Britain, but strained relations between British forces responsible for safeguarding southern Iraq and Iraqi authorities. Now, according to news service reports, a local Iraqi judge has issued a warrant ordering the rearrest of the commandos.

For war critics in Britain, at least 10,000 of whom took to the streets of London in a rally Saturday, the message was clear: British troops are not wanted by the people in Iraq, so there is no more reason they should stay.

“Now in Basra, you could write a surreal novel with a more real script,” said David Wilson, spokesman for the country’s Stop the War Coalition. “Who is left in Iraq who supports the occupation?”

On the eve Sunday of the four-day Labor Party conference, the Observer newspaper, citing unidentified sources, said the British government had mapped out plans to begin a major withdrawal in May, with detailed plans on military disengagement to be published next month and presented to Iraq’s National Assembly.

According to the newspaper, the withdrawal of British troops is expected to take a year and will be done sector by sector as officials determine local forces are ready to take control in their stead. But the newspaper also cautioned that the timetable could change depending on events on the ground.

Defense Secretary John Reid played down the Observer story on Sunday in an interview on Sky Television. He said it was “possible” that the withdrawal would begin next year, but denied that a timetable was being put in place.

“There will ... be a process -- it won’t happen overnight -- where [Iraqis] gradually take the lead, we gradually withdraw to barracks and we gradually withdraw from Iraq itself. At that stage, when the conditions have been met, we will withdraw,” Reid said. “And I said that is possible to start in some parts of the country, that handover, in the course of next year.”

Blair had hoped to have the first Labor conference of his third term as prime minister focus on an agenda of aggressive domestic reforms, including changes to the state pension system, but was forced to address the war issue again Sunday in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.

“There is no arbitrary date being set” for withdrawal, the prime minister said.

Blair told the interviewer that he was surprised that it has been so difficult to impose order in Iraq 2 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion. To date, at least 95 members of the British military have died in Iraq, including three this month.

“No, I didn’t expect quite the same sort of ferocity from every single element in the Middle East that came in and is doing their best to disrupt the political process,” he said. “But I have absolutely no doubt as to what we should do. We should stick with it.”

In spite of such statements, antiwar activists believe that public pressure for withdrawal is building, and that eventually government policy will shift toward an exit from Iraq sooner, rather than later.

Tom Hayden, the former California state senator and longtime activist, was among those attending an antiwar seminar in Brighton on Sunday night on the fringes of the party conference beginning in the seaside city Monday.

Speaking to a reporter Saturday after the antiwar rally, Hayden said he believed politicians were weighing their stances on the war as the news from Iraq turned more grim.

Although British friends are skeptical that Blair will change his position on the war, Hayden said he thought it possible.

“I’ve seen so many politicians change in my lifetime, you never rule it out,” he said. “They can reposition.”