British report finds ‘no good options left’ in Iraq

BRITISH troops should be withdrawn from Iraq once Iraqi forces have been trained, regardless of the security situation, the co-chairman of a commission looking into the policy said yesterday.

Paddy Ashdown said: “Our withdrawal rate should be determined not by the security situation — which allows the militias, the insurgents, to determine our withdrawal — but by the state of training of the Iraqi forces.”

Mr Ashdown, a former international envoy in Bosnia, told the BBC there were “no good options left” in Iraq but this was the “least worst” and carried fewer risks than other policies.