| Denmark may pull 100 soldiers out of Iraq: media
COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Denmark may pull 100 soldiers out of Iraq -- a fifth of its total contingent -- during the second half of this year, according to a government report to be published on May 10.
"The report will be published on the 10th of May but no announcement will be made before then" as to the number of soldiers, a civil servant at the foreign affairs ministry, who did not wish to be named, told AFP on Monday.
The document is not yet finished, and must be submitted to parliament for approval, according to the state television station TV2.
"There will be two procedures in the parliament before the final vote later in May probably," AFP's foreign ministry source confirmed.
Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller refused to make any comment until the report was published.
The 500 Danish troops are stationed in Basra under British command. Their mandate, renewable every six months, comes to an end in June.
A majority of Danes opposed their conservative-liberal government's decision to send troops to Iraq as part of the US-led coalition in 2003, and the vote on the matter in the country's parliament was very close.
The government only managed to obtain approval for the decision thanks to support from the far-right Danish People's Party (DF).
The DF would now support a proposal to withdraw 20 percent of Danish forces from Iraq, Danish media said.
The left-wing opposition, meanwhile, said a few months ago that it did not want the troops' mandate to be renewed in its current form.
Denmark's liberal prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is to visit US President George W. Bush at Camp David on 9 June, and their talks are expected to focus on the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rasmussen's office said ten days ago.
"The government will have put forward its proposal and I think it'll have the backing of a majority in parliament, this will be clear before the meeting in Camp David," said the same foreign ministry source, adding that it was likely that the document would even be formally adopted before Rasmussen's trip.
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