White House: Broad review of Iraq strategy underway (Roundup)

By Tony Czuczka Nov 12, 2006, 21:49 GMT

Washington - US national security agencies are reviewing strategy in Iraq, the White House said Sunday, the latest signal of a new approach to the war after the opposition Democratic Party's triumph in congressional elections.

Faced with growing pressure to change his Iraq policy, President George W Bush was due to meet Monday with members of a panel co-chaired by former US secretary of state James Baker that is drafting ideas for solving the crisis.

Few expect a quick withdrawal of US troops, even after Bush's Republicans lost control of both houses of the US Congress in elections Tuesday that were largely seen as a referendum on the war in Iraq.

But Bush on Saturday called Robert Gates, the former CIA director he named to replace Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, an 'agent of change.' General Peter Pace, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said Friday that military leaders were reviewing their strategy.

Bush's 'other national security agencies are doing a similar kind of review,' White House chief of staff Josh Bolten said Sunday on ABC television.

In Iraq, three bombings in Baghdad left at least 38 people dead and 71 wounded Sunday, most of them after a suicide bombing targeted at a police recruiting office.

Speculation is surging in Washington that the bipartisan Baker panel, launched by Congress in March, will offer both Bush and the newly empowered Democrats a way out of the impasse in Iraq. Its report is expected in December, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair was due to address the panel by videolink Tuesday.

Yet Bush has insisted since the election that he will accept nothing less than 'victory,' though he has scaled back his lofty rhetoric of democracy for the Middle East to creating an Iraq that can 'sustain, govern and defend itself,' and does not harbour terrorists.

'Iraq is the central front in this war on terror. I look forward to listening to ideas from the new leaders of Congress on the best way to support our troops on the front lines - and win the war on terror,' Bush said in his nationally broadcast Saturday radio message.

Meanwhile, Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard - two key US military allies in Iraq - agreed in a phone call that they remain committed and would not set a date for withdrawing troops, Howard said.

'You can't put a date on it but it will go on for a long time,' he said Saturday in Canberra.

In the US, many Democrats campaigned on a platform calling for a timetable to extricate troops from Iraq, which Bush has refused to set. US presidents hold overwhelming power to set foreign and military policy, so the Democrats are looking to harness widespread Republican discontent with Bush's war policy to put pressure on the administration.

But leading Democrats disagree among themselves about the tough choices required.

Senator Carl Levin, in line to head the upper chamber's Armed Services Committee when the newly elected legislature convenes in January, called Sunday for 'a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months.'

Former presidential candidate Howard Dean, who heads the Democrats' national party organization, argued against 'an arbitrary deadline' but insisted 'this cannot be left to the next president.'

'I think that we need to tell the Iraqi people that we're leaving, because I think, frankly, they are playing political games over there to see who can get into power on the backs of our troops,' Dean said on Fox News television.