Washington formally asked London to redeploy some British soldiers from the relatively calm Basra area to US-held zones near Baghdad, with Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon due to confirm the request in a Commons statement to the House of Commons.
Newspaper reports put the figure at around 650 troops. The move would free American forces to concentrate on Fallujah, an insurgent-controlled city west of the capital.
The timing drew immediate criticism. Any redeployment in the weeks before the 2 November US presidential election, critics argued, would be seen as Prime Minister Tony Blair offering a political lift to President George W. Bush. The Conservative defence spokesman called for the decision to rest entirely on military grounds.
Downing Street rejected the charge, describing the request as "a proposal from the operational level, not the political level." Blair's office said the election that mattered was Iraq's own scheduled January vote, not the American one.
Unease also surfaced within the military, with reports of British officers wary of serving under US command near Baghdad, citing differences in the two armies' operating styles. By October 2004, 68 British service personnel had been killed in Iraq, compared with 1,089 Americans.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in October 2004, in its own words.