Chris Huhne calls for troop withdrawal

5.01.52pm GMT Wed 1st Feb 2006

Liberal Democrat Leadership candidate Chris Huhne has called for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq, preferably by the end of the year. He has also questioned the need for Trident and a serious look at where UK troops are stationed. These are exactly the kind of things I want the Liberal Democrats to be saying and hope Chris can help focus the debate on these and other issues.

Chris Huhne said "We need to set a timetable and we should be looking at withdrawal from Iraq by the end of the year. That I think is do-able. There is accumulating evidence that because of our involvement in the invasion, and the lack of UN support for that, that we are aggravating some of the problems in Iraq instead of resolving them. And we need to tackle the residual legacy of defence decisions which were taken before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. We still have troops in Germany and we still have a deterrent, which was designed for a world in which there was a seriously aggressive superpower. I find it very hard to believe that we need to renew Trident."