US's Rice says Iraq coalition remains intact

BERLIN, Feb 21 (Reuters) The US-led coalition of international forces in Iraq is still intact after Britain announced plans to reduce its troop levels, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said earlier on Wednesday that hundreds of British troops would be withdrawn from Iraq in coming months, just as thousands of additional US soldiers are arriving to try to restore order in Baghdad.

''The coalition remains intact and in fact the British will have thousands of soldiers deployed in Iraq in the south,'' Rice told a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

''It is the plan that as it is possible to transfer responsibility to the Iraqis ... coalition forces would no longer be needed in those circumstances,'' she said.

Rice, who visited Iraq on Saturday, said there had been discussions with London about the situation in Iraq and that US forces faced different challenges and threats to British soldiers in the south.

''The British have done what is really the plan for the country as a whole which is to be able to transfer security responsibilities to the Iraqis as conditions permit,'' she said.

Blair said British troop levels in Iraq would fall by 1,600 in coming months but soldiers would stay into 2008, as long as they were wanted.

US President George W Bush, however, has ordered 21,500 extra troops to Iraq where US forces now number more than 140,000.

Reuters PDM RN2115