Republican US senators seek Iraq withdrawal plan

Washington, July 14: Two of President George W Bush's fellow Republicans in the US Senate urged him today to draw up plans to start withdrawing troops from Iraq, while leaving the order to pull them out up to him.

Sens Richard Lugar of Indiana and John Warner of Virginia plan to push their measure next week in the thick of a debate over the future of the Iraq war.

Lugar's floor speech next week, a text of which was distributed to reporters, says the Bush administration should ''immediately initiate planning for post-September contingencies, including a drawdown or redeployment of forces.'' But the Republicans' initiative does not set deadlines for beginning the withdrawal of some of the nearly 160,000 US troops now in Iraq or set a date for accomplishing a withdrawal, as Democrats want.

A showdown vote on a Democratic plan for removing combat troops from Iraq by next April is expected next week.

Under Warner-Lugar, Bush would present new war plans to Congress by October 16 and those plans should be designed to be implemented no later than December 31.

With their proposal, Lugar and Warner are joining several Democrats who have long argued that Congress' 2002 authorization of the Iraq war is obsolete and a new rationale for the war also should be submitted to lawmakers.

The senior Republicans call on Bush to submit a new argument for the war in September, when Gen David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, is scheduled to deliver a much-awaited report on progress toward securing Baghdad with recent boost of 30,000 more US troops.

Increasingly Critical

Lugar and Warner arguably are the most prominent Republicans in the Senate on foreign affairs and military matters. In recent weeks they have become increasingly critical of the war, leaving Bush with a more difficult path to continue combat, now in its fifth year.

A Lugar spokesman said he did not know whether the amendment would attract the 60 votes necessary in the 100-member Senate to advance controversial measures.

Lawmakers have been trying, so far without success, to attach a series of contentious Iraq war amendments to a military policy bill Congress hopes to complete.

''We want to avoid a drift in Iraq policy that continually references the next report or milestone, even as the fundamental conditions of our intervention in Iraq remain extremely problematic and hazardous,'' Lugar said in his remarks.

Yesterday, Warner said that Iraq's government was ''not providing leadership worthy of the considerable sacrifice of our forces and this has to change immediately.'' Lugar and Warner unveiled their amendment one day after Bush submitted an interim report to Congress on progress in Iraq that did little to ease lawmakers' unease over the war.

It also came one day after a deeply divided US House of Representatives voted to begin combat troop withdrawals within four months and complete them by April 1. The White House said Bush would veto such a bill.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the Baghdad government's mixed report card against critics in Congress today, saying the Bush administration needs two more months to find a ''coherent way forward'' in Iraq.

''We do have to recognize what a hard thing it is that they're doing. We have to continue to support them, and most importantly, we need not to make premature judgments,'' Rice told NBC's ''Today'' show.

Reuters

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