Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed on Tuesday to keep British troops in Iraq until their 'job is done' as he rejected claims that their presence fuelled extremism at home and abroad.
Blair defended his Iraq policies when asked whether he agreed with army chief General Sir Richard Dannatt, who called last week for their withdrawal soon because they exacerbated Britain's security problems.
Blair urged reporters at his monthly press conference to put Dannatt's interview in Friday's Daily Mail newspaper in the context of remarks he gave later the same day on radio and television.
"Of course it's the case ... for some of those areas in Iraq, particularly where Iraqi forces now want to take control over areas, it's important we don't overstay the time we need to be there," Blair said.
"But in no sense was he saying... that we should get out of Iraq before the job is done."
In a BBC radio interview on Friday, Dannatt said British troops were exacerbating the security problem in some, but not all, areas of Iraq, and were actually welcomed in places like Basra, the main southern city.
He told the Daily Mail: "I don't say the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them."
Dannatt added that Britain should "get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems".
Blair said that Dannatt had not suggested Britain should pull out of Iraq "irrespective of whether the job is done".
"It is our policy to come out of Iraq when the job is done. What is very dangerous is any suggestion we get out before the job is done," he said.
"That is not his position or the position of anyone I know in the army."
Pulling out of Basra immediately would be "disastrous", he said, insisting that Dannatt held the same view.
The ambition for Iraq -- shared by the army chief and the government -- was "a functioning democracy, a functioning economy and where the security is in the hands of the Iraqi forces," Blair said.
However, Dannatt told the Mail the ambition of setting up a Western-style democracy may have been too ambitious and the allies should settle perhaps for just keeping Iraq as a unitary state.
Blair added it was "absurd" to say that the military action in Iraq or Afghanistan was contributing to extremism in Britain, which last July saw 52 people killed in a series of suicide bomb attacks on London's public transport system.