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Hungary Sets Iraq Pullout as U.S. Election Ends 1 hour, 53 minutes ago World - Reuters By Balazs Koranyi BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary's 300 troops will be withdrawn from Iraq (news - web sites) by the end of March 2005, the government said, in an announcement officials said was timed to avoid influencing the U.S. presidential election Officials said the decision was announced between the end of voting and the official result of the U.S. presidential election, so as to avoid making it a campaign issue and to show it would have been made irrespective of who was U.S. president. "The timing of the decision is not a coincidence, there is no result yet in the U.S. election and we wanted to demonstrate it does not depend on who is president. If we had made this decision earlier it could have become a campaign issue," Defense Minister Ferenc Juhasz told a news conference. He was speaking just before Democratic challenger John Kerry (news - web sites) conceded the 2004 presidential election, handing President Bush (news - web sites) a second term in the White House. Hungary is the first of the new European Union (news - web sites) states which had joined the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to announce a formal withdrawal date, although the mandate of the soldiers, who form a transport battalion had been due to expire at the end of 2004. "Our ability to carry the financial burden is limited and the public's willingness to put up with it is also limited," Juhasz said. The new withdrawal date will require a two-thirds majority in a vote in parliament, and state news agency MTI said, without citing sources, that legislation could be presented Monday. GYURCSANY MAKES INITIAL ANNOUNCEMENT New Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who replaced Peter Medgyessy in a party coup in August, used the last day of 136 years of conscription to announce the Iraq pullout. The charismatic 43-year old millionaire businessman turned politician has revived the party's poll standings. He was quoted by state news agency MTI as telling Hungary's last conscripts: "To stay there until elections are completed is an obligation, to stay there for much longer is an impossibility. Therefore, we will bring back our soldiers back from Iraq by March 31, 2005." He was referring to Iraqi elections due in January. Fellow European Union newcomer Poland, which has frontline soldiers in Iraq, has already said it will scale down its 2,500-strong presence from early next year. And NATO (news - web sites) newcomer Bulgaria said Wednesday it will cut its small military presence in Iraq by over 10 percent next month due to a reduction in its expected military duties. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=721&e=1&u=/nm/20041103/wl_nm/iraq_hungary_dc Hooray for Hungary's leadership! - J.R. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/E-MAIL_TRIVIA/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
