LONDON, May 16: Britain's former foreign secretary Robin Cook said on Sunday the government should produce an "exit strategy " from Iraq and withdraw its troops soon.

"We really do need to get elections quickly, find a genuinely representative government of Iraq, recognise that frankly it's not going to be sympathetic to the coalition forces who are now so unpopular in Iraq," Cook, who quit the Labour government 14 months ago to protest the prime minister's support for the Iraq war.

"And I personally think we need an exit strategy that says as soon as elections have been held, as soon as there is a democratic government to run Iraq, we're getting out," he told the ITV channel's GMTV programme.

Iraq's polls are scheduled to take place in January 2005. An interim government will rule the country after the June 30 handover of limited sovereignty.

Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost he was "disappointed" by Cook's remarks. "I worked with him when he was foreign secretary. He knows full well these decisions have to be taken in light of events on the ground.

"You can't impose these highly artificial deadlines because necessarily we have to work with the grain of events and events for the moment certainly require the presence of British troops on the ground," he said. Cook also urged Tony Blair to distance himself from Bush, calling him "one of the most right-wing presidents we have seen in the US for a long time." -AFP