LONDON, Oct 19 (AFP) - Britain looked set Tuesday to agree to a US request to send its troops into violence-plagued areas of Iraq, a move Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted had no connection to the tight election race faced by close ally President George W. Bush.
"There has been a request by the American military to the British military, not a political request from the US president to me," Blair told reporters in London.
"No decision will be taken to re-deploy British troops unless it is clear militarily that that should and can happen," he said after a meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
A day earlier, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon announced Britain was considering the move and that a decision would be reached later in the week after consultations with military top brass.
But he strongly hinted the decision would be positive, an impression reinforced on Tuesday by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who said the government supported the idea strongly.
"We are very sympathetic to this proposal," Straw told a press conference, saying earlier during a radio interview that the government was "obviously moving towards saying yes".
The British troops would be sent from their current base in the relatively peaceful southern Iraqi city of Basra to relieve US forces elsewhere in the country, freeing up the latter to fight insurgents in areas like violence-wracked Fallujah.
Ministers have not revealed where the British forces might be sent, saying only that they will not be posted to Baghdad or Fallujah.
However it is widely expected that the troops -- reported to be around 650 members of the Scottish-based Black Watch regiment -- will go to towns just south of Baghdad that have been plagued by fighting since last year's war to remove president Saddam Hussein.
Such a move could spell political trouble for Blair, especially given the speculation that it is intended as boost for Bush ahead of the November 2 US election, tipped to be extremely close.
Blair rejected this notion.
"The only elections that matter in this regard are the Iraqi elections that happen next January," he told journalists at Downing Street.
Britain -- which has around 8,500 soldiers in Iraq, the second largest national force in the US-led coalition -- has seen a total of 68 deaths among service personnel since the invasion in March 2003, against 1,089 US casualties.
Newspapers, politicians and soldiers' families have warned that Britons would rail against what many would perceive as British troops fighting US battles under direct US command.
Most trenchant among the newspapers was the tabloid Daily Mirror, a staunch opponent of the war, which plastered its front page with a mock-up of Bush dressed as a finger-pointing Uncle Sam with the headline: "HIS country needs YOU."
"How many of them (British troops) are expected to die to help the president back into the White House?" it asked in an editorial column.
Perhaps more worrying for Blair, the Independent had on its front page a line-up of 10 members of parliament from the prime minister's ruling Labour Party, all of whom initially supported the Iraq war but who now harbour grave doubts about the US request.
Eric Illsley, a Labour MP for Barnsley in the north of England, told the Independent he was worried about the timing of the move.
"If we made a decision to move troops tomorrow, it looks like we are stepping in to help out the president," he said.
On Monday, the father of two soldiers in the Black Watch in Iraq said he was bitter at the thought of his sons being sent to relieve US forces.
"It's us going to pull the Yanks out of the fire once again," said James Buchanan.
"This is just a political game to help George Bush win the election and it all just stinks to high heaven."