As pressure builds for a change in Iraq policy, a top US commander there warned today that withdrawing troops too soon would leave the country “a mess”.

A long-awaited study expected to call for a US change of course in Iraq is intensifying pressure on President George Bush to find a way out of a war that has lost favour with the American public.

A rebellious Senate committee is defying President George Bush with its approval of terror-detainee legislation that the US president has vowed to block.

US officials in Iraq have solid evidence of weapons of mass destruction programmes and details probably will be released soon, two leading Senate Republicans said today after returning from the country.

A collision between a United States Navy surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet was blamed by a top US officer today on a ‘‘pattern of increasingly unsafe behaviour’’ by China’s military in the South China Sea.