This paper considers base station cooperation (BSC) strategies for the uplink of a multi-user multi-cell high frequency reuse scenario where distributed iterative detection (DID) schemes with soft/hard interference cancellation algorithms are studied. The conventional distributed detection scheme exchanges {soft symbol estimates} with all cooperating BSs. Since a large amount of information needs to be shared via the backhaul, the exchange of hard bit information is preferred, however a performance degradation is experienced. In this paper, we consider a reduced message passing (RMP) technique in which each BS generates a detection list with the probabilities for the desired symbol that are sorted according to the calculated probability. The network then selects the best {detection candidates} from the lists and conveys the index of the constellation symbols (instead of double-precision values) among the cooperating cells. The proposed DID-RMP achieves an inter-cell-interference (ICI) suppression with low backhaul traffic overhead compared with {the conventional soft bit exchange} and outperforms the previously reported hard/soft information exchange algorithms.