Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Friday said Australian troops will only withdraw from Iraq when the Middle East country is in a reasonably secure and stable situation.

Howard stopped short of specifying any dates of the withdrawal.

"Certainly I am not naming any dates. I repeat what I said before - that we go when we can leave a reasonably secure and stable situation," he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.

"You don't establish a timetable, you establish conditions. You only sensibly think about withdrawing from something like this by relating the time of the withdrawal to the achievement of certain conditions," he said.

"The most foolish thing in the world is to say we are going to leave by such and such a date irrespective of what the state of the country is," he added.

Howard's comments came after visiting Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said Thursday that his country is planning to have its own troops to take over security responsibility as early as the end of next year.

It is believed that Howard has softened the government's position Thursday on Iraq by declaring the existence of a " relatively stable" security situation in Iraq could be the trigger for the withdrawal of Australian troops.

The statements represent a subtle repositioning on the conditions for a pullout, with the prime minister in the past saying troops would stay until the "job is done" and as long as the Iraqi government wanted them to remain.

Howard's comments also came as U.S. President George W. Bush acknowledged for the first time a parallel between the raging violence in Iraq and the Vietnam War.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair conceded, also for the first time, that British troops in Iraq could be a "provocation."

Source: Xinhua