Troops will stay 'until job is done'
A defiant Downing Street today insisted that British troops would stay in Iraq "until the job is done".
The vow came as the Black Watch made final preparations before taking up peacekeeping duties in the dangerous Sunni triangle. The regiment is expected to leave its base in Basra in the next 48 hours and start moving north to the area around Iskandariyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad.
Downing Street has promised that the Black Watch will be home by Christmas, but it refused to rule out sending more troops north from the British sector if requested by the Iraqi provisional government. A No 10 spokesman said: "Our troops will remain for as long as they are asked to remain by the Iraqi government.
"They are there to help the Iraqi government establish democracy. They will stay until the job is done and the Iraqi security forces are increasingly able to take responsibility for security," he said.
The Black Watch is heading a deployment of 850 British personnel who will take over duties from the Americans in the so-called "triangle of death". The move is designed to free US marines as the coalition prepares for a new ground assault on the rebel city of Fallujah, thought to be the base of the extremist Abu al-Zarqawi, who claimed responsibility for the murder of Ken Bigley.
In a rousing send-off, Black Watch commander Lieutenant Colonel James Cowan told his battalion it would be "a force for good".
He said: "This regiment beat Napoleon, beat the Kaiser and beat Hitler. For the Jocks of the Black Watch this is just the latest chapter in our history and another job to be done."
But former prime minister John Major warned British forces could be in Iraq for "many years", and Britain was not even "near the beginning of the end" in Iraq.
Fears about the safety of British forces were heightened after the massacre at the weekend of 50 members of the Iraqi national guard. A group connected with al-Zarqawi has claimed responsibility. The bodies were found close to their training camp in north-east Iraq.
Iraqi officials said the attackers must have been tipped off that the soldiers were going home in minibuses after completing basic training. The deputy governor of Diyala province, Aqil Hamid al-Adili, said: "There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups."
General Walid al-Azzawi, the province's police chief, told the Daily Telegraph corpses had been laid out in four rows. "They were shot after being ordered to lie on the ground," he said. Others died while trying to escape.
