The Pentagon has started preparing for a force rotation that would cut the US military presence in Iraq there to about 105,000 by spring, defence officials have said.
It has begun alerting 43,000 US Reserve and National Guard troops and some 20,000 Marines to prepare for duty in Iraq next year in the rotation.
There are now 132,000 US troops in Iraq, but the Pentagon plans to cut that number by nearly 30,000 by using thousands of Iraqis being trained for tasks from military and police duty to guarding potential targets against guerrilla attack.
.A Defence Department spokesman denied the troop-cut plan was driven by politics. Deadly violence against US forces there has made the Iraq issue central in President George W. Bush's re-election bid next year.