Iraq war will cloud Blair's place in history

LONDON, Feb 21 (Reuters) Prime Minister Tony Blair's announcement that British troops will begin leaving Iraq is a step towards ending the most divisive episode of his premiership but the conflict will still taint his place in history.

The move, months before Blair is to step down after a decade in office, may allow him to claim some success from Britain's military intervention in Iraq while freeing him to concentrate on areas he sees as crucial to his legacy such as the West asia and combating climate change.

It also helps to give Blair's successor, expected to be finance minister Gordon Brown, a fresh start, clear of at least some of the baggage of Iraq that has weighed on Blair.

Wyn Grant, politics professor at Warwick University, said a partial troop withdrawal from Iraq would not clear the cloud over Blair created by his stauch support for US President George W Bush's invasion of Iraq.

''The involvement in Iraq will haunt him for the rest of his life ... and overshadow assessments of his period as prime minister,'' he said.

Blair told parliament British troop levels in Iraq would fall by 1,600, but soldiers would stay into 2008 if Iraq wanted.

Toby Dodge, a politics expert at the University of London's Queen Mary College, said Blair had withdrawn troops before the job was done. ''Basra is awash with guns, criminals and militias,'' he said.

''He would like to be remembered as the man who modernised the Labour Party and the British government and that will be overshadowed (because he) made the mistake of invading Iraq and dressed it up in mendacity,'' Dodge said.

JUSTIFICATION UNFOUNDED The justification for the war -- that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction -- proved unfounded. Iraq has since been plunged into a frenzy of violence in which tens of thousands of civilians and more than 101 British soldiers have been killed.

Blair repeatedly says that extremists, and not U.S. or British troops, are to blame for the violence.

Anthony Seldon, a biographer of Blair, said it was a ''cynical reading'' to see Blair as trying to close the Iraq episode before he leaves office, probably in July.

''He thinks the Iraq policy was right ... He's not scuttling out the troops because he thinks it's an unpopular policy.'' Blair led his Labour Party to three general election victories but his popularity has been undermined by the Iraq war and political scandals.

The outcome of a police investigation into party political funding could also determine how Blair goes down in history.

Police said today they had questioned a key Blair adviser, Ruth Turner, for a second time as part of their probe into claims that political parties nominated people for seats in parliament's upper house in return for party funding.

Blair has overseen a growing economy, raised spending on healthcare, worked to end the conflict in Northern Ireland and set up devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales. But many Britons believe he has failed to fulfil his early promise.

He has set himself a flurry of projects for his final months in office as he attempts to burnish his legacy.

Trying to get the stalled West Asia peace process back on track and pushing for a new international agreement against global warming rank high in his priorities.

He was due to hold talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas shortly after defending his Iraq policy in a lively parliamentary debate today.

''He thinks in his last remaining months he can sort out a (West Asia) problem existing since 1948. He may try that but I don't think there will be any success whatever,'' Dodge said.

REUTERS AB RAI2335