Britain supports the tactics employed by US forces in Iraq to battle Sunni insurgents and put down an uprising by a Shia group, British Secretary of Defence Geoff Hoon said on Saturday.
He said the British government believed the forces opposing US-led troops were a relatively small minority of determined extremists and that commanders were making the right decisions on the ground.
"I accept that we have got to do more to sort out the security situation, but we are not going to do that by sitting back and allowing extremists, terrorists to attack and kill, not only coalition forces but also Iraqis themselves trying to rebuild their own country," Hoon told BBC radio.
US forces have been battling Sunni insurgents in Falluja and the nearby town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, for the past week in some of the most intense fighting since the launch of the war that overthrew Saddam Hussein a year ago.
There have also been clashes with Shia militiamen south of Baghdad in a week of bloody turmoil that has killed several hundred Iraqis and at least 51 US and coalition troops.
Hoon said the British government, which provided the second largest force for the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, believed that the rebuilding of Iraq was progressing despite the violence and that large swathes of the country were better off.
"I don't think anyone, even the most critical commentator of the activity of coalition forces, could argue against the fact that in large parts of Iraq the situation is measurably better than it was 12 months ago and when it was under Saddam Hussein".