  A study of the deuteron breakup reaction $pd \to (pp)n$ with forward emission
of a fast proton pair with small excitation energy $E_{pp}<$ 3 MeV has been
performed at the ANKE spectrometer at COSY--J\"ulich. An exclusive measurement
was carried out at six proton--beam energies $T_p=$~0.6,~0.7,~0.8,~0.95,~1.35,
and 1.9 GeV by reconstructing the momenta of the two protons. The differential
cross section of the breakup reaction, averaged up to $8^{\circ}$ over the cm
polar angle of the total momentum of the $pp$ pairs, has been obtained. Since
the kinematics of this process is quite similar to that of backward elastic $pd
\to dp$ scattering, the results are compared to calculations based on a
theoretical model previously applied to the $pd \to dp$ process.
