US: The Senate has voted overwhelmingly to demand regular reports from President George Bush on progress towards completing the military mission in Iraq and withdrawing US forces.
Senators also voted to allow the detainees at Guantanamo Bay to appeal their detention status and punishments to a federal court, although they endorsed the Bush administration's military tribunals for prosecuting foreign terrorism suspects.
Shaken by the collapse in popular support for Mr Bush's conduct of the Iraq war, senators backed by 79 to 19 an amendment to the annual defence spending bill that calls for significant progress in 2006 towards withdrawing US forces.
The Republican majority in the Senate defeated a proposal from Democratic senator Carl Levin that would have demanded "a campaign plan with estimated dates" for the withdrawal of US forces.
The successful amendment, proposed by Republican John Warner, was almost identical to Mr Levin's - without the demand for a timetable for withdrawal - and most Democrats supported it.
"We need to have 2006 be a year of transition. I support the Warner amendment as the second-best approach," Mr Levin said.
The successful amendment said that US forces should not remain in Iraq any longer than required and that the people of Iraq should be so advised.
"2006 should be a year of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with Iraqi security forces taking the lead for the security of a free and sovereign Iraq, thereby creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq," it says.
The senators want Mr Bush to send a report to Congress every three months, outlining "the current military mission and the diplomatic, political, economic, and military measures, if any, that are being or have been undertaken to successfully complete or support that mission".
They identify a number of priorities, including efforts to promote political compromise among Iraq's main communities: engaging the international community and Iraq's neighbours in support of a political settlement; improving the delivery of basic services and international economic aid; and training Iraqi security forces.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said Americans realised that Mr Bush had no strategy for ending the war in Iraq.
"We want to change the course. We can't stay the course," he said.
Republican leader Bill Frist said that, while his party wanted to win the war in Iraq, Democrats wanted to give up.
"They want an exit strategy, a cut-and-run exit strategy.
"What we are for is a successful strategy," he said.
Mr Bush has accused Democrats of lying about the Iraq war and undermining US soldiers by suggesting that the president misled America into war.
The White House acknowledges that intelligence reports used to make the case for the war turned out to be wrong.
But Mr Bush says that most Democrats in Congress supported the war on the basis of the same intelligence.
Most prominent Democrats, including senators Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, voted for the war, but the overwhelming majority of Democratic activists, who will choose the party's presidential nominee in 2008, oppose the war.
The defence bill approved by the Senate yesterday includes a prohibition on the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, which Mr Bush has threatened to veto.