British Defence Secretary John Reid said Britain could start pulling out soldiers from Iraq next year but stressed it would not be held to any timetable for withdrawing forces.
John Reid
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said yesterday that British troops could leave the country within a year because Iraqi security forces would be ready to replace them.
But Mr Reid said any plans to hand over to Iraqi security forces would be dependent on events on the ground and that continued attacks by insurgents would only delay the process.
"When they develop the security forces to the level where they can take control of that counter terrorism we will hand over that to the Iraqis themselves," Mr Reid told the BBC.
"We are not saying that everyone will be out by the end of 2006, but we are saying that this process . . . is going relatively well and in the course of the next year we could well see the handover to Iraqi forces at certain places in Iraq, including in our own area," Mr Reid said.
Iraqis are working on training their own soldiers and police to take full control of security of their country.
Britain has about 8,000 soldiers in Iraq stationed mainly in the south. The area had been more stable than some other regions, but violence has also risen there in the past few months.