Australian troops will start pulling out of Iraq by the end of May, Prime Minister John Howard announced. In his words the elite special forces, fighter aircraft and warships were no longer needed.

"I don't think Australia should be in a situation where we have a large number of peacekeepers... simply because we have responsibilities of that kind going on in our region," Mr Howard said, ruled out a request by coalition partners the United States and Britain to send a sizeable peacekeeping force to Iraq to aid the post-war restructuring programme.

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