LONDON – Prime Minister Blair said he expects Iraq’s security forces to reach full strength by the end of the year, paving the way for Western troops to withdraw from the country.

After a meeting with the prime minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki, in Baghdad, Mr. Blair said the new government appointed this weekend marks the biggest step toward returning the nation to the control of Iraqis since the 2003 invasion. Mr. Blair travels to Washington this week for talks with President Bush.

“There is now no vestige of excuse for people to carry on with terror and bloodshed,” Mr. Blair said at a joint press conference with Mr. Maliki in Baghdad. “If it is violence that keeps us here, it is peace that will allow us to go.”

Britain has about 7,200 troops in Iraq, part of a coalition of 150,000 mainly from the America. Mr. Blair said Western troops would stay as long as Iraq’s leaders say they are necessary. Mr. Maliki said his aim was for Iraqi forces to control security in all except two of the nation’s 18 provinces by the end of the year.

Mr. Maliki said that American-led troops will hand over security responsibility to local forces in two provinces, Samawa and Amara, from next month. Others will be transferred “gradually” and by the end of the year most of them will be under Iraqi security control, except Baghdad and Al-Anbar, he said.

Mr. Maliki brushed aside concerns that rival Muslim sects were pushing his nation into a civil war. More than 1,000 Iraqis died in sectarian attacks in Baghdad last month and many more were killed across the country, President Talabani said on May 10.

“There are insurgents and there are gangs,” Mr. Maliki said. “They are not engaged in a civil war. There is no civil war. There are insurgents who are doing things against the law.”

Iraq’s Parliament voted this weekend to approve Mr. Maliki, his 35 cabinet members and two deputies. Hoshyar Zebari retained his post as foreign minister, and Hussain Sharistani was named oil minister.

The sectarian violence in Iraq was sparked by the February 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which is sacred to the country’s majority Shiite Muslims. That was followed by attacks on Sunni mosques and other violence, prompting the former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to say that Iraq had descended into civil war.

Mr. Blair said he is “very open to” proposals for an international conference backed by the United Nations to discuss the reconstruction of Iraq and the country’s debts. He declined to talk about a timetable for troop withdraw, saying the matter depends on “conditions on the ground.”

A senior British official traveling with Mr. Blair said the aim is to finish Western troop withdraw within four years, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported without naming the person from whom it got the information. Mr. Blair’s spokesman didn’t confirm the comment reflected British policy.

“There is a difference between Iraqi troops taking over in provinces which are largely peaceful already and taking over completely,” a spokesman for Blair, Tom Kelly, told journalists in Baghdad. “This is not something which changes overnight. It is a progression which depends on the readiness of Iraqi forces.”