SOFIA - The Bulgarian defence ministry has set December 31 as the deadline for all Bulgarian troops to leave Iraq, it said in a statement Wednesday.
A proposal to this regard will be submitted on Thursday to the cabinet, which should adopt it within a week, and it will then be passed on to parliament for final approval, ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsonev told AFP.
He said Defence Minister Nikolay Svinarov will also propose that Bulgaria sends up to 400 troops to Iraq in June to replace the 462 soldiers currently serving there, but that this should be the country's last deployment.
Parliament has to pronounce on it before it dissolves itself ahead of legislative elections at the end of June, and a decision is expected around mid April.
"We now expect the Bulgarian battalion to return before Christmas," the deputy president of parliament," told the private Bulgarian television channel 7 dni on Wednesday.
Svinarov on Tuesday said that he was opposed to a staggered withdrawal, as earlier proposed by Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov, and wants "all the troops withdrawn together."
The troop deployment in Iraq has been widely unpopular with the public, with polls showing that 70 percent of Bulgarians oppose it.
The decision to withdraw follows just week after an eighth Bulgarian soldier died in Iraq, under circumstances that heightened feelings against the US-led coalition further.
Machinegunner Gardi Gardev was killed in a US "friendly fire" incident outside Baghdad on March 4, due to a lack of communication between his patrol and a US communications post.
But despite deciding to withdraw, Svinarov is proposing that parliament "confirms Bulgaria's particiaption in the coalition."
He also wants the cabinet to discuss ways of "enlarging Bulgaria's participation in Iraqi forces' training missions."
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy is expected to discuss Bulgaria's military presence in Iraq during an official visit to the United States which starts Thursday.
03/23/2005 18:19 GMT