Barack Obama has pledged US troops will leave Iraq within 16 months if he is elected, but Gordon Brown has refused to give a timetable for a British withdrawal. Would such a timetable be useful or arbitrary?
In an interview with the German paper Der Spiegel, the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, appears to back Obama's timetable. "Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal," Maliki is quoted as saying.
Today, a Maliki spokesman said there had been a misunderstanding, suggesting that Maliki is sticking, publicly at least, to the more vague "time horizon" agreed with George Bush last Thursday.
This in itself was considered a major shift, if not a U-turn, by Bush, who had previously repeatedly ruled out arbitrary timetables.
For the moment, Brown is still sticking to the hymn sheet: "I am not going to give an artificial timetable at the moment."
The Washington Post thinks a timetable will be impossible to achieve, but others, such a Chris Weigant on the Hufffington Post, think it is gaining support, which will force John McCain to change his line . When Obama visits Britain later this week, will he persuade Brown to change his line too?
