Poland Postpones Full Pullout of Troops From Iraq

WARSAW, Dec. 27 -- Poland's government said on Tuesday it would keep a reduced military force in Iraq until the end of 2006, reversing a plan to complete the pullout of the 1,500-member contingent early in the year.

Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw Koziej told reporters that Polish strength in Iraq would be cut to 900 by March 2006. He said the focus of the force would shift toward the training of Iraqi troops.

Ukraine and Bulgaria, whose troops were part of a Polish-led multinational division in south-central Iraq, announced Tuesday that their contingents had completed their withdrawals.

In 2003, Poland's previous leftist government stood up to the European Union heavyweights, Germany and France, by firmly supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq, but later agreed to an early 2006 pullout.

With the decision announced Tuesday, the right-of-center government, which took office after recent elections, reaffirmed Polish government backing for the United States despite growing public opposition.

Under Polish law, the president makes the final decision on deployment of troops abroad, but political analysts see this largely as a formality.

"This is a very difficult decision," Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz told reporters, "but we take into consideration the fact that the mandate of U.N. stabilization forces has been extended to the whole of 2006 and, secondly, strong requests of Iraqi authorities that we stay there."