US panel to announce Iraq troop strategy

A cross-party commission, under pressure to offer a US exit strategy for Iraq, has reached a consensus and will announce its recommendations – reported to be a gradual pullback – next week, the group’s co-chairman said.

The Iraq Study Group’s report, much anticipated by the Bush administration and members of Congress, is coming out next Wednesday amid the spiralling violence in Iraq.

Democratic former congressman Lee Hamilton would not disclose any specifics about the group’s decisions, but the New York Times reported on its website today that the study group would call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American brigades now in Iraq, but would stop short of setting a specific timetable for withdrawal.

“This afternoon, we reached a consensus … and we will announce that on December 6,” Hamilton told a forum on national security at the Centre for American Progress, a liberal group, yesterday. “We’re making recommendations.”

Hamilton led the study group with former US secretary of state James Baker.

The Times, citing unidentified people familiar with the report, said it did not state whether the brigades, numbering 3,000 to 5,000 troops each, should be pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighbouring countries.

The commission members – five Democrats and five Republicans – had been split over the appropriate US troop levels in Iraq, and whether and how to pull American forces out, one official close to the panel’s deliberations said.

Commission members also recommended direct engagement with Syria and Iran in efforts to stabilise Iraq, according to media reports. The administration has been reluctant to engage those two countries, which it says have encouraged the violence.

Robert Gates, Bush’s nominee for defence secretary, has endorsed the idea of engaging Iran and Syria.

Gates made the comments in response to a questionnaire from the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is to hold a confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

There are currently about 139,000 US troops in Iraq; some 20,000 are in and around Baghdad, the capital.

President George Bush is under growing pressure to withdraw substantial numbers of US troops while shifting more responsibility to the Iraqi government.

Even so, top military commanders have said they would consider increasing US troop levels, at least temporarily, if they deemed it necessary.

Bush said on Tuesday that he would not withdraw American forces “until the mission is complete”.

Defence officials, meanwhile, said the Pentagon was developing plans to send four more battalions to Iraq early next year, including some to Baghdad.

The extra combat engineer battalions of Army reserves would total about 3,500 troops and would come from around the United States, they said.