All British troops may be gone from Iraq by the end of 2007 as Iraq's army and police gradually assume security responsibility, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Tuesday.

Talabani was speaking after meeting British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, who is in Iraq on her first official visit.

"In my personal opinion, by the end of 2007," Talabani said, when asked at a news conference when he thought Britain's 7,000-strong force in the Shi'ite south could go home.

"By then we will have achieved good success in building our forces," he added.

London and Washington see the build-up of Iraq's security forces, now numbering close to 300,000, including troops and police, as key to the withdrawal of the mainly American combined forces of about 150,000.

Beckett would not be drawn into offering a timetable for the withdrawal of all British troops and emphasized that Talabani was just giving a personal opinion. Britain has said it aims to cut its force by half next year.

"The president is not setting a deadline," she said, adding that the handover of territory to Iraqi forces will be dictated by conditions on the ground and as Iraqis build more strength.

"These are circumstances which we will have to judge over time," she said.

British officials said Beckett, who took office in May, was principally on a fact-finding mission to assess the situation.

Army command to be transfered

Earlier, after a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, Beckett said Britain was determined that Iraqis take over responsibility for security.

Salih said that by the end of this year nearly half of Iraq's 18 provinces would be under control of the Iraqi security forces and that a delayed transfer of command of Iraq's armed forces to Iraqis would take place this week.

An Iraqi government spokesman on Monday said the United States and Iraq hope to sign an agreement by next week to hand operational command of Iraq's new army to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, after wrangles on wording had held up the accord.

A handover ceremony set for Saturday was delayed over disagreements between Baghdad and Washington over the wording of a document outlining their armies' new relationship.

Denying there had ever been serious disagreement, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said: "Both sides have agreed on the main issues. I think the document is ready to be signed, probably by the end of this week or early next week."

He said all remaining disagreements were "technicalities."

The agreement, which the US military says is a key step towards Iraq taking responsibility for its security, lays out a gradual transfer of command from US forces to Iraqi units.

Under the timetable, every two weeks command of Iraqi units meeting certain criteria would be transferred until, by April 1, Iraqi troops in even the Sunni insurgent strongholds of Ramadi and Falluja would no longer be under US command, Dabbagh said.

In parallel with this, control of security is being handed over province by province to Iraqi leaders, a process Dabbagh said would largely be complete this year, requiring US forces then to receive approval for any movements across the country.

(China Daily September 6, 2006)