Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced on Thursday that Italy plans to withdraw the first 300 soldiers out of its 3,000 troops from Iraq in September.

"There is already a plan for the withdrawal of 300 of our soldiers without weakening our presence (in Iraq) at the end of September," he said in an interview with the state television RAI.

However, he added that he still needed approval of both the US-led coalition forces in Iraq and the Iraqi government to carry out the plan.

The prime minister said that Italy mapped out the plan because Iraqi security forces will finish training by the end of August and therefore be capable of maintaining the country's stability and security.

As a result, it will be redundant then to have foreign troops in Iraq, said.

Berlusconi's announcement is widely seen as an apparent gesture aimed at wooing voters in the regional elections scheduled for April 3-4.

The elections are considered as a rehearsal for the parliamentary vote next year in which Berlusconi will face a certer-left challenge headed by former European Commission president Romano Prodi.

Most Italians are opposed to the deployment in Iraq and the domestic call for withdrawal is on the increase since an intelligence officer was killed by US forces while escorting a released hostage to an Iraqi airport.

Berlusconi, a strong ally of US President George Bush, first announced earlier this month that he planned to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq in September.

An outcry from London and Washington later prompted him to deny any fixed withdrawal plan on the table.