Gates Faces Senate Grilling Over Iraq Cash Request

Democrats today plan to vent their grievances on Iraq when the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, appears at the Senate a day after Republicans blocked a debate about the conflict.

Mr Gates is scheduled to testify before the Senate armed services committee on the White House's $624.6bn (£317.4bn) request for defence spending.

The White House request includes an extra $100bn this year for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Gates can expect a grilling from Democrats, who were yesterday denied the chance to debate a resolution opposing George Bush's decision to send an extra 21,500 troops to Iraq.

The Democrats failed to muster the 60 votes necessary to start debate on the resolution, which was put forward by John Warner, a Republican senator, and Ben Nelson, a Democrat, and was seen as a vote of no confidence in the war.

The debate would have been the first attempt by Congress to confront the Bush administration on Iraq since Democrats won control of the Senate and House in November's midterm elections.

Negotiations about how to move forward on the debate were expected to continue today. Democrats and Republicans anticipate an eventual vote on a resolution because of the level of public interest in the issue.

The Democratic Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said there would be other opportunities to challenge the White House when the Senate considered measures such as Mr Bush's request for more money.

"You can run, but you can't hide," Mr Reid told his Republican colleagues on the floor. "We are going to debate Iraq."

Republicans blocked debate on the resolution after Democrats refused to give equal consideration to a Republican proposal by Senator Judd Gregg that would protect funding for troops.

While Democrats largely support funding for US forces, they wanted the debate to focus on the planned troop increase and limit discussion to two proposals.

Those were the Warner resolution opposing the troop "surge" and another by John McCain, a Republican senator and presidential candidate, supporting the Bush plan.

Democrats want to keep the focus on the president's proposal to increase troop levels "to demonstrate to him that his policy has little or no support," Joseph Biden, a Democratic senator, said.

A procedural vote, mostly along party lines, left the Democratic leadership 11 votes short of the 60 needed to begin debate on the bipartisan resolution.

Forty-seven Democrats and two Republicans voted to open a debate on the resolution, with 45 Republicans and one independent opposed.

Democrats sought to turn yesterday's development to their political advantage by accusing Republican senators and the White House of wanting to avoid a debate on a policy that is increasingly unpopular with Americans.

The White House, which has worked hard behind the scenes to block a vote on the Warner resolution said: "All sides have a right to be heard in this debate, and we support ... the Republicans' right to be able to offer the amendments they want to offer."