Top Republican Senator Attacks Bush Over Us Forces in Iraq

One of the most influential Republican senators in the US rounded on President George Bush over Iraq yesterday, saying the military surge begun in February has little chance of success and demanding swift action to downsize and redeploy US forces.

Richard Lugar, senior Republican member of the senate foreign relations committee, said the war, which he previously supported, was placing vital US interests in the Middle East at risk and could end disastrously unless a coherent withdrawal plan was agreed "very soon".

"In my judgment the current surge strategy is not effective ... It relies on military power to achieve goals that it cannot achieve and it lacks domestic support," Mr Lugar said in a Senate speech that caught the White House and Republican hawks on the hop.

"The political fragmentation in Iraq, the growing stress on our military, and the constraints of our own domestic political process are converging to make it impossible for the US to engineer a stable, multi-sectarian government in Iraq in a reasonable time-frame," Mr Lugar said.

In this context, he said, "our security interests call for a downsizing and redeployment of US forces ... A course change should happen now, while there is still some possibility of constructing a sustainable bipartisan Iraq strategy."

More attention should be paid to problems posed by the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, and reducing US dependence on Middle East oil, he said. And more emphasis should be placed on diplomatic and economic options to secure Iraq's future.

Until now only a handful of lesser-known Republican congressmen have dared to publicly challenge Mr Bush's conduct of the war. Political commentators said yesterday that Mr Lugar's intervention would provide "cover" for other dissidents within the party. It would also make it harder for the White House to dismiss anti-war Democrats as unpatriotic or opportunistic.

Mr Bush has been expected to make a decision about continuing the surge, which added 29,000 combat troops to US forces in Iraq, after the Iraq commander, General David Petraeus, delivers a progress report to Congress in early September.

But recent statements by the White House and Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the Iraq second-in-command, have played down the importance of the September date, suggesting instead that the surge may be prolonged until next spring or beyond.

Opinion polls suggest a majority of Americans supports withdrawal from Iraq, the sooner the better.