UK Foreign Minister visits Iraq ahead of troops pull-out

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband flew in to Iraq yesterday on a previously unannounced visit ahead of a planned July pullout of British troops, a British embassy official said.

The official said that Mr Miliband was to meet Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and Iraq's two vice presidents as President Jalal Talabani is abroad.

His visit comes amid a flurry of diplomacy at a time of improved security in the war-battered country, and coincides with a landmark trip by Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed al-Sabah, on the highest-level Kuwaiti visit since Saddam Hussein's forces invaded the emirate in 1990.

Iraqi leaders have issued an open invitation for foreign companies to return and invest in the oil-rich state, since a historic visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this month.

Last week, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was also in Iraq.

Mr Miliband, who last visited in April 2008, is to meet British troops in the southern province of Basra and also the newly-elected provincial council members today, the embassy official said.

His trip comes amid a new row back home over Britain's involvement in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

The British government has said it would veto publication of minutes from ministerial discussions about the legality of the 2003 invasion, immediately drawing accusations of a cover-up.

Mr Brown himself visited Iraq in December and said Britain's 4,100 troops would be out of the country by the end of July but their mission would already be completed "by the end of May, or earlier."

British forces on January 1 handed over control of Basra airport, its main military base in southern Iraq, to Iraqi officials in accordance with an agreement signed with Baghdad.

Oil-rich Basra is Iraq's third largest city and considered the country's financial hub due to crude production and its port, which gives it an outlet on the Gulf.

Britain's troops already withdrew from the city in September last year and handed over security control of Basra province some three months later.

The province had been under the control of British troops since the invasion.

British forces have since been training the Iraqi army in Basra and said they are aiding local economic development.

After British troops leave, relations between London and Baghdad will in theory revert to those between any other country, although a small contingent of military advisers is likely to stay on in Iraq.

A total of 179 British soldiers have died in Iraq since over the past six years.

Under a US-Iraqi security pact signed in November, US troops are to withdraw from towns and cities by June 30 and from the whole of Iraq by the end of 2011 although President Barack Obama is poised to accelerate the pullout.