US President Barack Obama will announce a plan to withdraw most troops from Iraq by August 2010, Pentagon officials said on Wednesday.
The decision will be announced during the president's visit to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina on Friday, the officials were quoted by CNN as saying.
Obama is expected to announce that except a residual force between 30,000 to 50,000 to be left till Dec. 2011, most of the 142,000 US troops will be out of Iraq by August 2010, 19 months after Obama's swearing-in on Jan. 20, they said.
The new withdrawal timetable will be three months later than Obama's original pledge to pull out most troops in 16 months after his inauguration.
Some 4,250 US troops died and 650 billion US dollars have been spent since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003.
(Xinhua News Agency February 26, 2009)