Cheney says British move sign of progress in Iraq

WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) A British timetable for beginning to withdraw its forces from Iraq was a sign of progress in the southern part of the country, Vice President Dick Cheney said today, despite unrelenting violence in Baghdad.

''I look at it and what I see is an affirmation of the fact that in parts of Iraq ... things are going pretty well, '' he said in an interview with ABC News in Japan, where the vice president was meeting with a key US ally.

Cheney said he had spoken to a friend who had made the trek from Baghdad to Basra recently and had ''found the situation dramatically improved compared to where it was a year or so ago.'' The British planned withdrawal comes just President George W Bush plans to send another 21,500 US troops into Iraq to try to halt the violence in areas like Baghdad.

British forces handed over command of the main Iraqi army unit in Basra to Iraqis on Tuesday.

The move by the staunch Bush ally Britain could, however, embolden Democrats to boost pressure on Bush to set his own timetable for withdrawing US troops from the increasingly unpopular four-year war.

Democrats in the US House of Representatives last week approved a symbolic, non-binding resolution opposing the troop increase.

Cheney ridiculed Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and war critic Rep John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, for their opposition to sending more US forces into Iraq.

''I think in fact if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we'll do is validate the al Qaeda strategy, the al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people,'' Cheney told ABC News.

REUTERS PDM ND1846