Bush vows to take Iraq report 'very seriously'

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) An influential bipartisan panel is expected to recommend today that US forces withdraw from combat over the next year to focus on training Iraqis and President George W Bush said he would take the recommendations ''very seriously.'' ''This report gives a very tough assessment of the situation in Iraq,'' Bush said after meeting for about an hour with members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group at the White House.

The Republican president has not said if he will heed the advice of the panel, which also calls for a comprehensive regional effort to stabilize Iraq.

The report, which is to be released at 11 am (2130 IST), stops short of recommending a hard timetable for withdrawal but stresses that Iraqis need to take on a larger share of the military role.

''I told the members that this report called 'The Way Forward,' will be taken very seriously by this administration,'' Bush said.

More than three-and-a-half years after the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, about 140,000 American troops remain in Iraq fighting an insurgency and trying to stop savage sectarian strife between Shi'ites and Sunnis.

The conflict has lasted longer than US involvement in World War Two and has killed more than 2,900 American troops.

Ethnic fighting has killed thousands of Iraqis, raising debate over whether the country has descended into civil war and whether the US-backed government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki can stem the carnage.

Bush is under added political pressure to change course in Iraq since the November 7 elections when voters, who had soured on the war, ended Republican control of Congress.

The group led by Republican former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana is expected to influence the debate over the war because its members were unanimous in their advice.

Sources familiar with the group's deliberations said the report would recommend the US military shift away from combat and toward a support role in Iraq over the next year or so.

It is also expected to call for a regional conference on stabilizing Iraq that could lead to direct US talks with Iran and Syria, an option that the White House has opposed.

Reuters LL GC1918