LONDON, Oct 22 (AFP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to redeploy British troops into a US-controlled volatile area of Iraq could mark the "tipping point" of his mandate, former minister Robin Cook wrote Friday in The Guardian.
"When they come to write the history of the Iraq adventure, the decision to deploy British troops to the US sector may be seen as the tipping point at which the patience finally snapped of many of those who had hitherto given Tony Blair the benefit of the doubt," Cook said.
Britain agreed Thursday to an unprecedented US request to redeploy 850 troops to the Babil province south and southwest of Baghdad, freeing up US soldiers for an expected assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
The soldiers from the Black Watch battalion had been stationed in the south of Iraq, a relatively calm region compared to the rebel heartlands near Baghdad.
Cook, a former foreign secretary who quit Blair's government in protest over the Iraq war, said that Blair's cabinet, instead of producing an exit strategy for British troops, was "going to push them even deeper into the insurgent territory."
Moreover, he said, Britain's forces would now be "tarred by association" with US troops.
"An inescapable consequence of the decision to embed British troops in the US sector is that our forces will become tarred by association with US methods and held responsible of the civilian casualties that result," he said.
The troop redeployment, announced by Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, came amid a storm of speculation about whether it was a purely military move or a political decision aimed at giving Blair's war ally US President George W. Bush a timely boost for his re-election campaign.
"It is equally obvious that the (US) request was the product of US politics," Cook wrote.
10/22/2004 01:28 GMT - AFP