"The military are telling us we're on track. This is fine, we are reshaping our forces for the next stage of conflict," O'Brien said in an interview with the BBC television.

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

Asked if such pauses signaled the setbacks in the Iraqi war, O'Brien insisted that the coalition forces were right at the positions where they expected to be.

He said Britain had no plan of increasing its forces in Iraq, while the American military planned to add 100,000 more soldiers to the war by the end of April.

"We believe we've got the forces there that we -- the British military -- want," he said. Britain has committed 45,000 troops to the US-led war in Iraq aimed at toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

(Xinhua News Agency March 30, 2003)