US delayed UK's Basra pullout: Brigadier

LONDON: Political pressure from the United States delayed the British withdrawal from the southern Iraqi city of Basra for five months, Britain's Army commander there said in an interview published yesterday.

Britain could have left Basra Palace as early as April, but the United States insisted British forces stay on, The Daily Telegraph quoted Brigadier General James Bashall as saying.

"In April we could have come out and done the transition completely and it would have been the right thing to do, but politics prevented that," Bashall was quoted as saying. "The Americans asked us to stay for longer."