By Radu Marinas BUCHAREST, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Romania's ruling Liberals will ask parliament to hold a debate on withdrawing its 600 troops from Iraq after collecting one million signatures on a petition, a senior official said. The Liberals, headed by Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu, are at loggerheads with President Traian Basescu over Romania's involvement in Iraq, arguing the mission is too costly and should be ended soon. "We have collected a little more than one million signatures (backing the withdrawal)," Bogdan Olteanu, a top Liberal party official and speaker of the lower house, told Reuters. In June, the government unveiled plans to pull out troops by the end of 2006, angering Basescu who said Romania's ally Washington should have been consulted. No such plans materialised and the mission has become unpopular with many people in the poor ex-Soviet satellite of 22 million, which will join the European Union next year. The troops remain a key point of contention between the Liberals and Basescu who is linked to another government coalition party, the Democrats. "What we intend to do is to send a letter to the president and another one to the parliament, accompanied by this list, and ask them to take this into consideration and ask parliament to organise a debate about our presence there," Olteanu said. "If it ends up in a resolution then it will be very difficult for the president and for the government to continue financing our (military) presence there." The two groupings account for most of the government's parliamentary majority and have quarrelled over policy issues and jobs since taking over power from the ex-communists in 2004. NATO member Romania has been a staunch ally of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
