Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown said British forces will leave Iraq in the first half of 2009 after a six-year war that ejected Saddam Hussein from power and helped bring down Tony Blair.

Brown and his Iraqi counterpart, Nuri al-Maliki, said the government in Baghdad approved a draft law providing for the withdrawal of troops from the U.K., Australia, Romania, Estonia, and El Salvador no later than July 31, 2009.

“We have been engaged in the most difficult task, the task of establishing a democracy,” Brown said at a press conference in Baghdad today. “We leave Iraq a better place.”

The agreement will leave the U.S. without its most important ally in Iraq and allow Britain to divert more resources into the escalating conflict in Afghanistan. The U.K. and the U.S. stood alone in the invasion against the objections of France, China and Russia, damaging the popularity of government on both sides of the Atlantic and leading to the resignation of Blair in 2007.

For Brown, winding down the war effort in Iraq will allow his Labour government to focus on combating recession at home and preparing for an election that must be held by the middle of 2010. Brown’s popularity with voters has risen in recent months as he won praise for his handling of a bank rescue program, prompting speculation he’ll call a vote next year.

‘Good for Labour’

“Anything that gets Britain out of Iraq is good for Labour,” said Patrick Dunleavy, a professor of political science at the London School of Economics. “It removes one of the big problems some people have in backing Labour.”

President George W. Bush paid a valedictory visit to country earlier this month. The U.S., which has 149,000 troops in Iraq, down from a peak of about 165,000, will pull back from Iraq’s towns and cities by the middle of 2009, and leave the country by the end of 2011, under a Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, agreed last month.

U.S. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said the British decision has been “well coordinated” with American military commanders in Iraq.

“Every country makes their contributions in different ways,” Whitman said. “The British have been good allies in terms of providing troops.”

U.S. Forces

While Whitman said he had “no reason to dispute” British statements that Iraqi forces can now handle security in the south, he declined to say whether the U.S. might at some point have to shift some of its forces into that area.

President-elect Barack Obama, who campaigned against the war from the beginning, plans to remove all U.S. forces within 16 months of his January inauguration, leaving a few soldiers to train Iraqis and conduct counter-terrorism operations.

Violence in Iraq as whole diminished this year after Sunni Muslim tribal leaders turned against al-Qaeda and a surge in U.S. troops. Even so, sporadic outbursts occur, and at least eight people died when a car bomb exploded outside a traffic police post in Baghdad today, Agence France-Presse reported.

Brown paid tribute to the U.K. troops who fought in Iraq during his visit, which also took him to the southern city of Basra and the port of Umm Qasra, saying more than 100,000 have gone through the country since the March 2003 invasion and that there had been 178 fatalities. He laid a wreath at a memorial at Basra airbase as a tribute to the dead.

Brown’s Comment

“Most places I have gone today, I could not have gone to a few months ago,” Brown said in Umm Qasra. “The tasks we set out to do have been done.”

The U.K. has about 4,100 troops left in Iraq, most at an air base outside Basra, down from more than 40,000 in 2003. The Iraqi army now provides day-to-day security in the region and Brown has repeatedly said the U.K. expects a “fundamental change” in the British mission there next year.

“We would like to thank the British,” al-Maliki said at a joint press conference with Brown. “They have supported the Iraqis and helped us to topple the former regime.”

The Iraqi draft law allows the government in Baghdad to ask any of the forces to withdraw even earlier or extend their deployment to provide training or assistance. It also bans any operations or military activities on the territory and waters or in the airspace of Iraq without prior approval from Iraq, according to the statement. The resolution covers North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops, who are leading an Iraqi officer training program and aren’t fighting in the country.

Winding Down

Britain began paring back its presence in Iraq in early 2007, when Blair shifted forces to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. Brown has stuck to that strategy since he took power in June of last year, meaning the U.K. already has more than twice as many soldiers in Afghanistan as in Iraq.

“The troop numbers had already been reduced to a level where they were not a force that could do very much,” said Nigel Adderly, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “Last year the U.K. came to a tipping point where the only way forward was further reduction. This is a natural progression.”

Brown has been under pressure from officers to ease the burden on the British army, which has been pushed to the limit by the twin deployments. He has said diminished violence in southern Iraq fully justifies the exit.

Domestic Concerns

Underlining Brown’s increasing domestic concerns, the prime minister broke into his visit with al-Maliki to tell reporters the U.K. government will allocate 158 million pounds ($245 million) to help people who recently lost their jobs. In London, the statistics office said jobless claims rose at the fastest pace since 1991, the year of the last recession.

A poll published today showed Brown’s party had the support of 33 percent of voters compared with 38 percent for the Conservative opposition. The opposition lead of five points in the survey by ICM Ltd. conducted Dec. 12-14 narrowed from as much as 28 points in September.

The U.K. has achieved goals it set out last July, Brown said. Those include completing the training of Iraqi troops, which now number 22,000 in southern Iraq, improving the economy and getting the area ready for provincial elections due in 2009, he said.

Brown said he will make a statement to Parliament tomorrow on troop numbers in Iraq.

The U.K. won’t be able to re-deploy all of its remaining troops in Iraq to Afghanistan when their mission is over without doing long-term damage to its forces, General Jock Stirrup, chief of defense staff, who is accompanying Brown to Iraq today said.

“We cannot just have a one to one transfer from Iraq to Afghanistan,” he said, speaking at Basra airbase. “The net result must be a reduction in our operational tempo because the forces have been overstretched for too long. That’s what we will do in 2009.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Deen in Umm Qasr at markdeen@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: December 17, 2008 11:13 EST