By Ross Colvin AMARA, Iraq, April 18 (Reuters) - British forces handed over security of the southern Iraq province of Maysan on Wednesday, the fourth province to be transferred to Iraqis under a plan to eventually allow the withdrawal of foreign troops. Britain, which has 7,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq's Shi'ite south, pulled its soldiers out of Maysan's capital, Amara, last year and repositioned them along the Iranian border inside the province. Their withdrawal from their heavily mortared base in Amara had been greeted at the time as a victory by the Mehdi Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Washington regards the Mehdi Army as the greatest threat to peace in Iraq. A handover ceremony, attended by Iraqi and British officials, was shown on Iraqi television. Overwhelmingly Shi'ite, Maysan, home to the Marsh Arabs and with large oil fields, has been spared much of the sectarian violence engulfing Baghdad and other areas that is pushing Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war. In October, clashes broke out between militiamen and police in Amara, prompting the dispatch of hundreds of Iraqi troops. The province has also been the scene of a power struggle between two rival Shi'ite militias vying for control. With the handover of Maysan, the third of the four provinces that Britain took charge of after the 2003 invasion, British forces now only have control of Basra province. That includes Basra city, Iraq's second largest after Baghdad. Prime Minister Tony Blair said in February Britain would begin withdrawing a quarter of its 7,000 troops stationed mainly in and around Basra later this year. But stabilising Basra, a port crucial for Iraq as it is the hub for the country's largest oilfields, has proven more elusive as tension between rival parties vying for control of Basra's vast oil wealth also sometimes spill over into violence. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has resisted calls from Sadr to set a deadline for a withdrawal of foreign troops, has said U.S.-led troops will leave when Iraqi security forces can take over security in all its 18 provinces. There are around 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The three provinces of autonomous northern Kurdistan are under effective control of Kurdish peshmerga militias and are due to be formally handed over later this year. Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said on Tuesday the central provinces of Wasit and Babel, under U.S. military control, will be handed over in the "near future."
