Violence-wracked Iraq risks descending into even worse chaos and bloodshed, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett warned on Thursday, saying the country stands at a 'critical juncture.'
In a speech on counter-terrorism, she pledged that British troops -- who joined the US-led invasion of the country in 2003 -- will remain there as long as the Baghdad government wants them.
"The situation in Iraq is one which is dangerous and volatile," she said in a speech at the Royal United Service Institute, a key London think-tank.
"We are at a critical juncture in which the fate of that country hangs in the balance. There is the very real risk of even greater instability and bloodshed than we have already seen."
The US and British governments are under growing pressure to rethink their strategy in Iraq, where the death toll among both countries' soldiers continues to mount.
On Wednesday, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld paid the price of public skepticism about the war as he resigned following mid-term elections which saw US President George W. Bush's Republicans lose their grip on Congress.
Beckett pledged that British troops would stay in Iraq as long as is necessary.
"We will do what we told the democratically elected government that we would do: stay there as long as that government asks us to do so. "We will leave when they are confident that they can take the role of security in the country on their own shoulders," she said.
A precipitous withdrawal "would be leaving the Iraqi government without the means to prevent a further escalation in the violence, without the tools to enforce the rule of law and without the authority to prevent their country turning into a base for terrorism," she said.
"We must not let that happen."