Bush will not accept Democrats' Iraq war timetable

US President George Bush’s stance on a Democratic agreement to set a timetable on the Iraq war has not changed: he will not accept it.

Mr Bush planned to repeat that message today before leaving the White House for New York and a Republican fund-raising dinner.

“If they insist on sending the bill to him in its current form, that has an arbitrary surrender date and handcuffs the generals, the president will veto it,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

As part of the president’s push, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was expected to meet today with key senators, including members of the Senate Finance Committee, to discuss the funding bill.

A leading Republican, meanwhile, warned that Democratic leaders are making an all-too-familiar mistake with the impending showdown: not listening to seasoned commanders.

Rep Bill Young, said catastrophe always follows when civilians turn a deaf ear to their military officers.

In the 2003 run-up to the war, Young said in an interview, administration officials dismissed a top Army officer’s estimate that securing Iraq would probably require several hundred thousand troops.

“I just don’t think that it’s a good idea for us here in the Congress to try to manage the conduct of the war,” Young, a military appropriations expert, told his colleagues during a meeting Monday.

Gen David Petraeus, the new Iraq commander, will try to persuade lawmakers in a private briefing this week to pursue a difference course.

However, Democratic fund appropriators in the House of Representatives and the Senate agreed Monday on a €99bn bill that would fund the Iraq war but order troops to begin leaving by October 1 with the goal of completing the pullout six months later.

Bush has promised to veto the measure, which would force lawmakers back to the drawing table. Democrats would need a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto.

“I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job,” Bush told reporters as he met with Petraeus yesterday.

Democrats said they will not back down and pointed to Petraeus’ past remarks that security in Iraq requires a political solution.

“Here is the bottom line,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said in a speech in which he quoted a retired Army general who opposes Bush’s policy. “Americans must come to grips with the fact that our military alone cannot establish a democracy.”

Reid likened Bush to President Lyndon Johnson, saying Johnson ordered troop escalations in Vietnam in the late 1960s in an attempt “to save his political legacy” only to watch US casualties climb steadily.

“The time for patience is long past,” said Reid, who last week said the war in Iraq was “lost.”

Radio ads expected to be broadcast today will attack Reid as treating troops like a “political football,” Republican officials said.

According to a transcript, an Iraq veteran identified as Capt. Trip Bellard says: “Senator Reid’s remarks undercut the morale of our soldiers and undermine our troops on the ground.”

As outlined by Democratic officials, the emerging legislation would require the withdrawal of US forces to begin by October 1, even earlier if Bush cannot certify that the Iraqi government is making progress in disarming militias, reducing sectarian violence and forging political compromises.

Another provision in the measure would withhold about €625m in foreign aid from the Iraqis if the government does not meet those standards.