The US Senate has overwhelmingly rejected a Democratic party call to start the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by years' end.
In an 86-13 vote, the Senate rejected a Democratic proposal that would require the administration to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by July 2007, with redeployments beginning this year.
The vote comes a week after both houses of Congress soundly rejected withdrawal timetables for the 127,000 troops in Iraq and as polls show voters are weary about the war in its fourth year.
Republicans argued the United States must stay put to help the fledgling Iraqi government, while Democrats demanded that the Bush administration make clear that American forces won't be in Iraq forever.
Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have staged bitter partisan debates on Iraq for two weeks, with both sides maneuvering for the political upper-hand in a mid-term election year.
This week, Senate Republicans welcomed the Democratic-engineered debate because it highlighted divisions in the Democratic Party little more than four months before Election Day and as the GOP is trying to overcome polls showing the public favors a power shift in Congress to Democrats.
The Bush administration says US troops will stay in Iraq until Iraqi security forces can defend the country against a lethal insurgency that rose up after the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.