US:President George Bush has threatened to veto a Democratic Bill that would order the withdrawal of most US forces from Iraq next year. House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she expects Democrats in the House of Representatives to unite behind a proposal to link funding for the war to a withdrawal date of September 1st, 2008.
"We are a caucus and we will come together and find our common ground. And I believe, in the end, we will be unified on it," she said.
Ms Pelosi hopes that almost all Democrats in the House and some moderate Republicans will support the Bill but White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said the president would strike it down as soon as it reaches his desk.
"What we're seeing here is an artificial, precipitous withdrawal from Iraq based on, unfortunately, politics in Washington, not on conditions on the ground in Baghdad," he said.
A separate measure in the Senate calls for a target date of March 2008 for the withdrawal of most combat troops from Iraq. Senate majority leader Harry Reid stressed that the date was a goal rather than a deadline but the resolution calls upon the Bush administration to limit the US mission to training Iraqi forces, performing counterterrorism operations and protecting US assets within three months of its adoption.
In an interview with The Irish Times, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Senate Democrats were ready to rally behind the plan. "It's the best of the approaches because it avoids a lot of the nitpicking and debate about when, where, what, and instead is very straightforward. We want to protect and support our troops. The mission has to change in Iraq. We have to begin withdrawing our troops."
Mrs Clinton said it was important that Democrats seek to "rein in" the president, although she acknowledged that he would probably veto any legislation.
"I think it's important to just keep doing it as much as we can, month after month after month and to marshal public opinion. And frankly, a lot of these Republican senators who are up for re-election, they're going to have to start thinking twice about standing with this president on this policy which has failed. And I predict to you that if we stay on this, if we don't blink, if we keep pushing the position that we're all unified behind, we'll begin to pick up even more Republicans."
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans were still studying the Democrats' latest proposal but he criticised it as "the latest iteration" of a plan to make the job of US commanders in Iraq more difficult.
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