Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown (left) walks with United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon before their meeting at 10 Downing Street in London, yesterday. Ban Ki-moon is making his first official visit to Britain since he replaced Kofi Annan as the U.N. chief at the start of this year. - AP

LONDON (AP):

Prime Minister Gordon Brown acknowledged there had been failures in planning for post-conflict Iraq, and said yesterday that Britain's forces would be shifting away from combat and more money would be poured into stimulating the economy.

Brown, in office for two weeks, said he had not set a timetable to withdraw the 5,500 British troops stationed mainly around the southern Iraqi city of Basra and would respect his obligations to both the United Nations and the Iraqi Government.

But he said there would be an increase in resources aimed at stimulating Iraq's economy as troops switch from "a combat role to an overwatch role".

"One of the failures at the beginning (of the U.S-led invasion) was that we didn't put the resources and the help into the economic reconstruction that was necessary," Brown told British Broadcasting Corp., radio.

Brown defended his predecessor over pre-war intelligence, saying Tony Blair had fully apologised for presenting a later discredited dossier of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

"Tony Blair went to the House of Commons and said very clearly that he was sorry for what had happened," Brown told British Broadcasting Corp., radio's 'Today' programme.

No impact

The new leader repeated Blair's statements that policy in Iraq and Afghanistan had no impact on the threat to Britain from terrorism despite three recent failed bombings in London and Scotland.

Britain would be at risk "whatever was happeningin Afghanistan or Iraq," the PM said.

Brown said no country could be "secure in a situation where you have a set of terrorist groups, loosely linked as al-Qaida, that are determined to practise carnage across the world."

Al-Qaida-linked terrorists "have struck in many, many countries, have organisations and cells operating right across Europe and in other countries including, of course, Africa as well as in America," Brown said.

Later in Parliament, Brown sought to distance himself from the conflict that tainted Blair's leadership unveiling a new legislative programme to Parliament tightly focused on domestic policy.