Norway election winner says will pull out of Iraq :

REUTERS

5:13 p.m. September 15, 2005

OSLO – Norwegian Labor party leader Jens Stoltenberg, who is set to be premier after winning an election this week, told U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday that Norway would pull its soldiers out of Iraq, a spokesman said.

NATO ally Norway has about 20 soldiers in Iraq in staff officer positions within the British and Polish contingents and in NATO training for Iraqi forces.

Norway did not support the U.S.-led war in Iraq, saying there was no clear U.N. mandate for an invasion, but sent soldiers after Washington said the war had ended.

'President Bush called Mr Stoltenberg to congratulate him on the election victory, and they discussed cooperation on the war on terror and Stoltenberg said we would bring the soldiers in Iraq home,' Stoltenberg's spokesman Torbjoern Eriksen said.

Stoltenberg's 'Red-Green' alliance with the Socialist Left and rural Centre party won Norway's Sept. 12 parliamentary elections to oust the centre-right government of Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik.

Stoltenberg, 46, who was prime minister in 2000-2001, is expected to form a three-party government that would take office in mid-October.

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