Britain's Blair bows to pressure with promise to quit within ayear, but won't set precise date

~ Many believe the prime minister's reputation was damaged by his support of Bush.

LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair, his reputation in Britain badly damaged by his refusal to break ranks with President Bush, gave in Thursday to a fierce revolt in his Labour Party and reluctantly promised to quit within a year.

Blair, whose popularity began sinking when he committed his nation to the U.S.-led war in Iraq three years ago, had long resisted calls to publicly set a timeframe for his departure from office. He feared such an announcement would make him a lame duck and sap his remaining authority.

But ultimately, the foreign leader best known to Americans could find no other way to end days of public turmoil that were severely damaging Labour, which has been in power for nearly a decade but now trails the opposition Conservatives in the polls.

"I would have preferred to do this in my own way," Blair said, as he conceded that the party's annual conference this month would be his last. Next year's conference is scheduled for September 2007.

He refused to set a specific departure date, saying, "The precise timetable has to be left to me and has to be done in the proper way."

Blair appeared to have struck a deal with his expected successor, Treasury chief Gordon Brown, who signaled his support in a statement minutes before Blair spoke to television cameras at a north London school.

The key question is whether the prime minister's exit strategy will be detailed and speedy enough to satisfy the impatient Labour legislators who forced his hand.

Early signals were that it would buy the 53-year-old Blair time -- but not much. He's eager to reach the 10-year anniversary of his 1997 assumption of office, which would be in May.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Blair and Bush still had a lot of work to do together.

"He's a valued ally," Snow said. "And at this point, we're not sitting around writing encomia for Tony Blair. We're instead busy working with him."

With the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003, Blair began to lose the iron control he once exercised over his party.

Long derided by critics as the U.S. president's "poodle," he suffered a further blow at July's G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. An open microphone caught a chat in which he seemed embarrassingly subservient to Bush, who greeted him by shouting "Yo, Blair!"

Anger over his handling of this summer's Mideast fighting and anxiety over the party's slide in the polls fueled the rank-and-file's impatience for him to leave quickly, or at least to say when he planned to go. Blair's refusal to call for an early end to the Israel-Hezbollah fighting in Lebanon was the final provocation for many once-loyal supporters.

It served as yet another reminder of his close alliance with Bush -- a friendship widely detested within the Labour Party -- and stirred bitter memories of Blair's decision to commit Britain to the Iraq war despite intense public opposition.

That conflict is the root of his political problems, and continued bloodshed in Iraq keeps it in the headlines. The war has severely damaged his credibility and was widely seen as the reason Labour suffered a sharply reduced majority when he led it to a third straight election win last year.

Blair promised before that vote that he would not seek a fourth term.

A resurgent Conservative Party with a dynamic young leader, David Cameron, has added recently to his woes.

Cameron, benefiting from Labour's troubles, said the government was at war with itself.

"What's happened today isn't going to end the uncertainty," he said in a statement. "It will probably only add to the paralysis. And frankly Britain deserves better than this."

Brown's statement, though, seemed aimed at showing Labour remained united.

Opening a children's sports tournament in Glasgow, Scotland, Brown said that although he has had questions about Blair's plans, he would support his decisions.

"When I met the prime minister yesterday I said to him ... it is for him to make the decision," said Brown, who looked relaxed and cheerful. "I will support him in the decisions he makes."

Chris Bryant, who organized a letter in which 15 Labour lawmakers called this week for the prime minister's resignation, said he was encouraged.

"I hope we can get on with an open and transparent process of appointing our new leader sooner rather than later," he said.

Eight junior officials quit Wednesday rather than remove their names from the letter.

Their revolt had raised the possibility that Labour's eventual change of command would be rancorous and messy -- reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher's abrupt, involuntary departure from office in 1990 at the hand of rebels in her Conservative Party -- rather than the "stable, orderly transition" that Blair has long promised.

The prime minister apologized on Labour's behalf for the tumultuous week, which also reportedly included shouting matches with Brown.

"With everything that's going on here and in the world (it) has not been our finest hour," Blair said.

The two men, now fierce rivals, jointly overhauled Labour in the 1990s, dragging it to the political center and making it electable again after 18 years in opposition.

Political legend says they struck a deal about the party's future at a chic north London restaurant shortly after then-leader John Smith died suddenly in 1994. Brown would stand aside and give Blair a clear shot at the top job, the gossip goes, if Blair committed to step down midway through a second term as prime minister and let his old competitor take the job.

Both have refused to comment on the rumor, but more than a year into Blair's third term Brown and his allies were clearly growing impatient.

Eager to prevent the eventual handover from getting even uglier -- and throwing the elections expected in 2009 to the Tories -- many party heavyweights strongly backed Brown as the next Labour leader and prime minister.

"I have no doubt that when the time comes next year, the party will choose Gordon to succeed Tony -- and it's right that he should," said Peter Hain, Blair's secretary for Northern Irish affairs.

Theories about the exact timing for a leadership change abound.

Speculation focused on May but Blair's spokesman said widespread guesses about a specific date were "just plain wrong."

British governments usually serve maximum five-year terms before the House of Commons must face re-election. The prime minister is almost always the leader of the party that commands a parliamentary majority.

But an election can happen more quickly -- either because the prime minister loses majority support in the Commons, or chooses to call an early election in hopes of increasing the government's majority. If a prime minister resigns or dies, an election is not required; the new leader of the governing party can become prime minister if backed by a Commons majority.

Brown, 55, keeps a low public profile.

Politically, he has been described as a brilliant thinker who has kept a steady hand on Britain's previously fickle economy in his role as Treasury chief and masterminded Labour's landslide election wins in 1997 and 2001.

But he lacks Blair's gregarious nature and polish and some Labour supporters worry he won't score as well with voters.