Defence Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski, speaking before tense talks with visiting US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, said that a final timetable for the withdrawal would be decided soon after October 15.

"There is an ongoing debate within the government. Some preliminary conclusions will be presented by the prime minister to the parliament on October 15, when there is a vote on a no-confidence motion in the government," he told the private radio Zet.

"We would like shortly afterwards to adopt a clear position and fix the withdrawal date," the minister added.

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said on Monday after talks in Paris that no firm date to complete the withdrawal had been decided yet, but confirmed that Poland hoped "to finish our mission at the end of 2005."

Poland is the fourth largest troop contributor to the US-led coalition in Iraq -- after the United States itself, Britain and Italy -- and has been one of Washington's staunchest allies there. But the ruling centre-left party faces strong popular opposition at home to the deployment.

US President George W. Bush, who faces growing public disquiet over the troubled US-led occupation of Iraq as he seeks re-election next month, is likely to be dismayed at the prospect of a Polish troop withdrawal.

His Democratic rival, John Kerry, who has attacked Bush for launching an ill-considered war in Iraq, has closed the gap in opinion polls after a strong performance in the first of their three debates last week.

However the United States on Monday downplayed the earlier Polish comments, saying Warsaw's commitment to the US-led coalition was not "calendar-driven."

Poland sent 2,500 troops to Iraq last year in the wake of the US-led invasion and heads up a multinational division of 6,000 soldiers in south-central Iraq.

But the intervention has proven costly. Seventeen Polish nationals have died in Iraq -- 13 soldiers and four civilians -- including three soldiers killed in an attack last month near the central Iraqi city of Hilla.

According to the latest poll, more than 70 percent of Poles are opposed to the presence of their country's troops in Iraq.

The issue has sparked internal divisions within the Polish government, with Prime Minister Marek Belka complaining that he had not been consulted over the defence minister's announcement Monday of a pullout by the end of 2005.

In an interview with the daily Rzeczpospolita published on Tuesday, Belka insisted that Szmajdzinski's comments "do not reflect the position of the government."

He is "very optimistic if he thinks that the situation in Iraq will stabilise sufficiently by the end of 2005 to enable us to withdraw our contingent," said Belka, who was the top economic official in the former US-led administration of Iraq.

However, the two men met Tuesday and Szmajdzinski stressed that he had agreed his latest announcement with Belka. "The prime minister has authorised me to inform public opinion of this," he said.

Analysts in Warsaw said that the ruling Democratic Left Allianceparty was trying to salvage its popularity ahead of elections next year, with opinion polls currently crediting it with only seven percent support.

"In the background there is the very weak position of the ruling party in Poland," Mateusz Falkowski of the Institute of Public Affairs think-tank told

Another factor was the US election, in which Kerry now seems to have a fighting chance of success.

"The Polish government is trying to moderate its position (over Iraq) among other reasons because there is a possibility that Kerry will become president of the United States," he said.