Bush praises Iraq study group as Democrats seek policy shift

US President George W Bush yesterday praised a bipartisan commission on Iraq for asking him good questions but said “I’m not going to prejudge” the report the panel will issue.

He pledged to search with victorious Democrats in Congress next year for common objectives in dealing with the conflict.

“I’m not sure what the report is going to say. I look forward to seeing it,” Mr Bush told reporters in the Oval Office at the conclusion of a separate meeting he had with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Mr Bush said the goal in Iraq still is “a government that can sustain, govern and defend itself and serve as an ally in this war on terror” and that “the best military options depend on conditions on the ground”.

White House press secretary Tony Snow earlier described the meeting as a conversation in which both sides shared views. “This is not a deposition,” he said. Mr Bush talked in the Oval Office with members of the Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James A Baker III and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton. The group is to release findings before the end of the year.

“I was impressed by the questions they asked. They want us to succeed in Iraq, just like I want us to succeed. So we had a really good discussion,” Mr Bush said.

In the meantime, General Peter Pace, chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, is leading an investigation within the Pentagon as to how to find success in Iraq.

Yesterday, Carl Levin, the Democrat in line to become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, offered a grim assessment on the situation, accusing the administration of ignoring the reality that “we’re getting deeper and deeper into a hole — that we should stop digging and that we should look for alternatives in order to promote the chances of success in Iraq”.

Even before it is finished, the study group’s report is seen by many as having huge stakes. It could give the Democratic and Republican parties a chance at consensus — or at least a tenable framework for agreement — after an election that reshaped Mr Bush’s final two years in office.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, a bomb tore through a minibus in a largely Shi’ite neighbourhood yesterday, killing at least 20 people and wounding 18. Gunmen killed at least 10 people, including a television cameraman and a Sunni sheikh, in executions and assassinations around Iraq.