Democrats Back Down Over Iraq Withdrawal

The Bush administration is set to receive $120bn (£60bn) in funding for the war in Iraq after Democrats backed off from their insistence on a withdrawal date.

With the Democrats conceding defeat on an issue that for months has blocked a bill covering Iraq spending, the House of Representatives and Senate are now expected to vote on the legislation tomorrow.

The bill, which provides money for the war until the end of September, will then go to the White House on Friday to be signed into law before Congress goes into recess for a week.

Instead of troop-withdrawal dates, the Democrats accepted a Republican plan to establish political and legislative benchmarks for the Iraqi government, with periodic reports from George Bush on its progress, starting in late July. The US could hold back reconstruction aid if Iraq fails to meet the benchmarks.

The Democrats recaptured control of Congress in the November midterm elections but lack the votes to override a presidential veto. Mr Bush vetoed a bill in May that called for troop withdrawals to start later this year while setting a goal of removing most US combat forces by the end of March next year.

With US forces about to feel the financial squeeze, the Democrats were under strong pressure to relent on their insistence for a timetable for withdrawal.

Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan, said the Democrats had blinked first.

"The Warner plan, which substitutes 19 benchmarks to be achieved by the Iraqi government for the exact departure dates of US troops, puts some reporting restrictions on Bush but essentially gives him free rein to continue to prosecute the Iraq war as he pleases," said the professor, who runs the Informed Comment blog.

Putting a brave face on their retreat, the Democrats said they had made headway, as the White House initially wanted no restrictions on war funding and opposed the more than $20bn in extra domestic and military-related spending and a rise in the minimum wage - also a Democratic demand included in the bill.

But the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was so disappointed with the outcome that she said she might vote against the Iraq portion of the package, which will be split in two parts when it comes before the House.

The first vote will be on war funding, while the second will decide whether extra money should be spent on domestic emergencies, military base closures, care for veterans and other projects.

"I'm not likely to vote for something that doesn't have a timetable," Ms Pelosi said.

The Democrats are now gearing up for a new fight in the summer when funding from the bill expires, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, delivers an assessment of the US troop "surge" and Congress sees how much progress the Iraqi government has made on the set benchmarks.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that top US commanders and diplomats in Iraq were finishing a comprehensive new US strategy.

The plan, a joint effort between Gen Petraeus and the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, anticipates keeping the current US troop levels of 160,000 into next year, but also intends to significantly increase the size of the 144,000-strong Iraqi army.

But the plan puts more emphasis on political aspects, including negotiating settlements between warring factions from a national down to a local level. The counterinsurgency approach will be modified to protect Iraq's population in trouble areas.

Gen Petraeus's senior counterinsurgency adviser, David Kilcullen, told the Post: "The revised counterinsurgency approach we're taking now really focuses on protecting those people 24/7 . . . and that competent non-sectarian institutions take the baton from us."

US operations in 2004 and 2005, he acknowledged, "had the unintended consequence of killing off Iraqis who supported us. We would clear an area, encourage people to sign up for government programs, but then we would have to leave and those people would be left exposed and would get killed."