By IRNA
London : The British government Friday ruled out the need to maintain a separate capacity for re-intervention in Iraq if the security situation in the south deteriorates.
UK forces in Iraq retain the capability to provide support to the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) if requested and envisages this taking various forms of ‘light touch’ support in areas such as planning, logistics, and surveillance, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.
In the event of a very severe deterioration in the security situation in a province within the south east, the most demanding form of coalition support, a substantial coalition deployment or ‘re-intervention’, could be considered, the MoD.
But it insisted that there was a contingent capacity in Iraq to do this if required as such a level of support would only be necessary were the deterioration so significant.
Re-intervention would only be if “the ISF, firstly with their own reinforcements and then with the range of combat forces MND (the Multinational Division) South East could provide, were unable to manage the situation.”
“Given the increasing capacity of the ISF, we judge this to be a very improbable scenario,” the MoD said in response to a Defence Committee report asking whether the UK needs to maintain a reserve of troops to re-intervene as it cuts its deployment to 2,500 troops.
The report questioned how the UK planned to maintain a re-intervention capability, which if to be credible, would need to be capable of drawing upon forces from outside Iraq.
In response, the MoD said it always has additional forces outside Iraq, which could be made available for deployment in support of any operation should the need arise.
“This contingent capacity will remain, but it is judged highly unlikely that it will be required in Iraq,” it said.
The MoD confirmed that the primary focus of its reduced force in Iraq from spring following the handover of power in Basra last November, will “continue to be the monitoring, mentoring and training of the ISF.”
This included with a battle-group dedicated to this activity, and other elements of the force also delivering specific capacity-building tasks.
The reduced forces, it said, will be supported by a logistics and support element based outside Iraq, but elsewhere in the region outside the country.