US President George Bush today met with a bipartisan group seeking consensus on a new approach for the war in Iraq amid widespread agreement that the administration's current efforts have not worked well enough or fast enough.

US military commanders are re-evaluating strategy in Iraq to determine what changes are needed, the top general said.

An American television news correspondent who had reported on the deteriorating conditions in Iraq for three years was in critical but stable condition at a US military hospital in Germany today, a day after a car bomb killed two of her British colleagues.

President George Bush will today set out a defence of his embattled war policy, after he stressed that a US military pullout from Iraq would be a terrible mistake.