UK Iraq military spending nears 1 billion pounds

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

LONDON, Sep 27 (Reuters) Britain spent an estimated 958 million pounds on its military effort in Iraq in 2005/6, according to figures released today, almost 50 million pounds more than the previous year.

A report from the Ministry of Defence showed a total of 1.2 billion pounds was spent in 2005/6 on ''conflict prevention'' worldwide.

The MoD said it spent 14.5 billion pounds with UK suppliers, about half of which went to manufacturing industries.

At the same time, the number of people serving in UK armed forces has fallen by almost 10,000 over the past five years to just over 201,000 personnel in April 2006.

''This reduction is primarily a result of the restructuring of the armed forces,'' the MoD said in a statement.

Britain's armed forces are now operating around 3,000 below strength, a position which the MoD said was an improvement on last year.

REUTERS AB KN1655

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