Once the battles in Iraq moved to a "different" phase, the British Defense Ministry would review the commitment of 45,000 British troops currently deployed in the Gulf, Hoon told the BBC Radio 4 in an interview.

"Obviously once we move to a different kind of conflict we can then look at whether we have the right kinds of forces," Hoon said.

"They (the British troops in the Gulf) can certainly stay there for months, and there has never been any doubt of that," he said. "But clearly, ultimately, they would have to be replaced if that was such a long conflict."

Afterwards, a spokesman of the Defense Ministry told local reporters that Hoon was talking of troop rotation as a theoretical possibility and that at the current time "we haven't made any plans."

Earlier in the day, British Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien told another BBC program that the US-British coalition forces were reshaping for the next stage of the war in Iraq.

His remarks came after a pause in land advances from the south towards Iraqi capital Baghdad could be extended by several weeks due to overstretched supply lines and unexpectedly stiff Iraqi resistance.

The US-led war aimed at toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein entered the 11th day on Sunday with a death toll of at least 36 US and 23 British servicemen, most of them killed in accidents or friendly fire.

On Saturday, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahafsaid that from Friday night to Saturday alone, 140 Iraqi civilians were killed and 351 others injured during US-led air strikes on Baghdad and four Iraqi provinces.

(Xinhua News Agency March 30, 2003)