LONDON — The United States is urging Britain to send about 1,700 fresh troops to fill the vacuum being left by withdrawing Spanish troops around the Shi’ite flash point of Najaf, newspapers and a senior Conservative Party spokesman said yesterday.
The request is being interpreted here as an American challenge to the British to demonstrate that their Iraqi-friendly tactics can work outside Basra, one of the most welcoming cities for coalition forces.
Reports said Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce the new British deployments — amounting to a troop strength increase of nearly one-quarter — in Parliament today.
“U.S. sends our boys into Hell,” was the front-page headline in the Conservative-supporting Sunday Express. “Put up or shut up, U.S. tells our troops,” another headline stated across the next two pages.
The newspaper claimed there had been a “furious row” between U.S. generals and Britain’s top army chiefs over remarks made last week by the head of the British Army, Gen. Mike Jackson.
Gen. Jackson told the Defense Committee of the House of Commons there is a risk of “great military friction” between British and American troops over their approaches to peacekeeping in Iraq.
“We must be able to fight with the Americans; that doesn’t equal we must fight as the Americans. You see my distinction,” he said. “That the British approach to post-conflict is doctrinally different to the U.S. is a fact of life.”
British commanders in Basra said in television interviews that their efforts to work with community and tribal leaders had born fruit and would be maintained despite the coordinated bombings last week that left 68 dead, including 18 schoolchildren.
British troops, unlike Americans, are not authorized by their rules of engagement to fire when they perceive a threat, military analysts said.
Noncommissioned officers and their troops are encouraged to use their own initiative and to patrol in soft caps or berets rather than in helmets. However, in central Basra these “softly softly” tactics have been altered and troops are wearing body armor and helmets.
The Sunday Express quoted an unnamed British army officer as saying American commanders in Baghdad were “sick to death” of what he termed the “superior attitude” they felt was being taken by British officers in Basra.
“Now they want us to walk the walk, not just talk the talk,” he is quoted as saying. He said that dealing with Najaf would be far more difficult than anything the British have faced so far. But he maintained that Britain still would be able to apply its more accommodating approach without suffering serious casualties.
“It is the Americans who have been stirring it up there,” the British officer was quoted as saying.
The Ministry of Defense said last week it was unlikely Britain would take charge of the multinational brigade being vacated by the Spanish. But by the weekend the talks were reported to have reached “an advanced stage.”
Four battalions from the Scottish 52 Brigade and elements of the 16 Air Assault Brigade were likely to be deployed, the Sunday Express said. It also suggested that NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, under command of two British generals in Germany, could be sent to take charge.
Nicholas Soames, the Conservative opposition defense spokesman, accused the prime minister of being “less than frank” about the potential new deployments, which might prove unpopular within the ruling party.
Mr. Soames said: “We too have heard from very good sources that discussions are going on between the Americans and the British at a very high level about the sending of troops.”
While conceding that U.S. troops had been dealing with much stronger resistance than their British counterparts, he said, “To fly [combat] helicopters over the suburbs is not the best way to win hearts and minds. … It’s best to do things with as light a hand as possible, with the proviso that you can use force when necessary.”
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