Leading daily urges Britain to reject US troop request

LONDON, Oct 19 (AFP) - Warning against "buying further into a failed US strategy," the Financial Times urged Britain Tuesday to reject a US request to redeploy troops near Baghdad as other newspapers expressed fears Britain was becoming ever more entangled in Iraq.
The Financial Times daily expressed doubt that British troops could make much difference if they were to act on a US request to move into central Iraq and give US troops more scope to put down a spreading insurgency.
"Under present circumstances, it is not at all clear this redeployment would help stabilise Iraq," the daily said.
The Financial Times then ran down a list of what it said were US failures in Iraq.
"For the first 15 months of the occupation, the US exhibited a visible fear of democracy in Iraq, resisting calls for early elections to a constituent assembly and cancelling many local polls," it said.
"During that period, and after the handover of notional sovereignty in June, it has preferred to work through expatriate politicians with little local support," it said.
"This exclusive political process will not work. But what it certainly will do is expand the ranks of the insurgents," it added.
"Now US forces are preparing an offensive against up to two dozen Sunni towns and cities where, on current practice, they will use indiscriminate and disproportionate air power against dense urban areas, causing hundreds of civilian casualties," it said.
"That is not something British forces, with a different military culture and rules of engagement should be part of," it said.
"It really is time to move the Iraq debate on, and to focus it on how to secure a decent future for Iraqis," the Financial Times said.
"That will not be achieved by Britain buying further into a failed US strategy," it concluded.
Meanwhile, the Guardian newspaper said that British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon made a sales pitch for the request to the House of Commons that he himself "knows is a dud."
Nobody believed Hoon when he said it remains an open question whether Britain will meet America's request, it said.
"Everyone who heard him will have assumed from the tone of his voice and the balance of his argument that troops will shortly be on the move and that, as a result, British involvement in Iraq will have entered a new and unsettling phase," the Guardian said.
It lashed out at Hoon for playing down the importance of the decision, saying it was "routine."
"British forces will face new dangers in a new part of the country and work with forces operating under different rules of engagement and outside the remit of the international criminal court," the Guardian said.
"We are going in deeper and our government seems ashamed to say so. MPs must demand a vote," it concluded.
The Daily Telegraph said that Hoon, during his address to the House of Commons, failed to "dispel concerns surrounding the American request" to the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
It warned that British forces, if they move out of the area they control around Basra, "will be associated with the US style of operation," which is perceived as much more aggressive.
"That may be to the good, if it yields results, but Mr. Blair and Mr. Hoon need to be much clearer and more forceful on this point," it said.