Polish vote winners to seek 2008 Iraq pullout

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's centre-right Civic Platform, poised to form the next government after winning Sunday's parliamentary election, will seek to pull Polish troops from Iraq early in 2008, a top party official said.

The official said the Civic Platform might also break the outgoing government's negotiations with the United States on hosting a missile defense system on Polish soil unless Washington offered sufficient security trade-offs.

"Polish troops should withdraw from Iraq in 2008 because our mission has already been fulfilled," Bogdan Zdrojewski, the head of the party's parliamentary caucus, told Reuters by telephone.

He said the 900-strong Polish contingent would hopefully be withdrawn from Iraq near the beginning of 2008, but this still depended on whatever conditions the current government had negotiated.

The Civic Platform has long questioned the presence of Polish troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led force, but the government of conservative Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski had said immediate withdrawal would amount to desertion.

The official did not say a Civic Platform-led government would stop negotiations on the missile shield, which the United States says can counter the danger of "rogue states" and which Russia calls a threat.

But he did say a new government would set tougher conditions for allowing interceptor missiles to be based in Poland.

"This is about a clear improvement of Poland's security. This could be a mid-range missile defense system, information connected with a possible terrorist attack or equipment," he said.

The outgoing government and U.S. officials have said they expect talks on the shield to be completed early next year.