BAGHDAD, Dec 17: Prime Minister Gordon Brown confirmed during a visit to Iraq on Wednesday that British troops will leave next year after “building a democracy for the future”.

He made his fourth trip to Iraq as prime minister one day after the Iraqi government drafted a law that will allow British forces to withdraw in mid-2009, more than six years after the US-led invasion.

His trip was not announced in advance, for security reasons, and followed a visit on Sunday by US President George W. Bush, who had to dodge shoes thrown by an Iraqi journalist angry at the sectarian slaughter unleashed by the invasion.

Shortly after Brown met Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, twin bomb blasts in Baghdad killed 18 people and wounded 53, in a reminder of the violence that has only recently begun to wane.

“The role played by the UK combat forces is drawing to a close. These forces will have completed their tasks in the first half of 2009 and will then leave Iraq,” Brown and Maliki said in a joint statement. “But the partnership between the two countries will continue to take on new dimensions.”

Britain, Iraq’s former colonial power, was the main partner of the US in the war. Its forces have shrunk to just 4,100 soldiers now based near the southern city of Basra, where Brown headed after a brief visit to Baghdad.

Britain says its work in the south of Iraq is done and that Basra is now safely in the hands of Iraqi security forces.

“They’ve done some of the most difficult work ... building a democracy for the future and defending it against terrorism,” Brown said of the 100,000 British soldiers he estimated had served in Iraq since 2003.—Reuters