Bush to consider Rumsfeld options on Iraq -W House

WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) President George W Bush is considering a ''laundry list'' of options for Iraq policy changes suggested by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before resigning last month, a senior White House official said today.

Rumsfeld told the White House in a classified memo, two days before he resigned, that the U S military's role in Iraq was not working well and it was ''time for a major adjustment,'' including possible troop reductions.

The memo, first reported by The New York Times, was one of the proposals that Bush will consider before making decisions on how to proceed, Stephen Hadley, White House national security adviser, said.

''What Secretary Rumsfeld did, I think very helpfully, was put together a sort of laundry list of ideas,'' Hadley said on ABC's ''This Week.'' Bush agrees with Rumsfeld that ''things are not proceeding well enough, or fast enough in Iraq. We have to make some changes, we need a new way forward in Iraq and that's what this policy review is all about,'' Hadley said.

Hadley accompanied Bush last week to Jordan where the president met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Bush, under pressure to change Iraq policy, will hear this week from the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker that has been reviewing Iraq policy.

Democrats, who won control of Congress in November elections mainly due to the unpopular Iraq war, have called for changing course. They take over as the majority in Congress from Bush's Republican Party in January. Rumsfeld's resignation was announced the day after the elections.

Bush will consider all input on Iraq before making decisions on changes, Hadley said.

''At some point obviously we would like to begin bringing troops back home,'' Hadley said.

''We are pushing on an open door. Prime Minister Maliki made very clear to the president that he and his unity government want to take more responsibility,'' he said.

Maliki, after his meeting with Bush, said last week in an ABC television interview that Iraqi forces would be able to take over security from U.S. troops by June 2007.

Bush will meet with a top leader of Iraq's majority Shi'ites, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, tomorrow at the White House, and with Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, next month.

''He (Bush) has confidence in this unity government, he believes they have the will to succeed, they do not have sufficient capabilities,'' Hadley said.

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