Iraqi adviser sees US troops gone in 2008

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By Ibon Villelabeitia
16 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - American troops will probably be gone from Iraq by mid-2008 as the Iraqi forces they are training take over from them, Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said on Friday.

He said he expected the roughly 133,000 U.S. troops to be cut to less than 100,000 by year's end and an "overwhelming majority" of them to have left by the end of 2007 under a U.S.-Iraqi plan for progressively handing over security.

"We have a roadmap, a condition-based agreement where, by the end of this year, the number of coalition forces will probably be less than 100,000," he told Reuters in an interview.

"By the end of next year the overwhelming majority of coalition forces would have left the country and probably by the middle of 2008 there will be no foreign soldiers in the country."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060428/wl_nm/iraq_dc_83