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Bush to meet Congress over Iraq

US President George W Bush is to meet top Democrats to try to find a way to fund US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It comes a day after he vetoed a Congressional bill that would have linked war funding to a timetable for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Signing the veto, Mr Bush said setting a deadline for withdrawal would be "setting a date for failure" in Iraq.

Each side has urged compromise on the issue, with talk turning to setting "benchmarks" for Iraqi leaders to meet.

Leaders of the Democrat-controlled US Congress on Tuesday signed the controversial bill agreeing to $100bn (£50bn) in further funding on condition US combat troops begin to withdraw this year.

'Right direction'

Congress will now have to seek some kind of compromise in order to draft new legislation on war funding.

The Democrats acknowledge they will eventually have to soften their bill as they cannot risk being accused of undercutting the troops during wartime, says the BBC's James Westhead in Washington.

Mr Bush has said he will veto any bill that sets an "artificial" timescale for withdrawal, insisting that time is needed for the new strategy of a surge of reinforcements in Baghdad to succeed.
The top US general in Iraq, David Petraeus, has said reducing forces could lead to increased violence.

Speaking on Wednesday morning to a US building contractors' association, Mr Bush asked for patience.

"We are heading in the right direction," he said, adding that signs of progress in Iraq were "not headline-grabbing" compared to the news of car bombings and suicide attacks, but were there nonetheless.

After using his veto on Tuesday, Mr Bush criticised the bill, saying it "substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgement of our military commanders.

"I believe setting a deadline for a withdrawal would demoralise the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments," he said in a televised speech.

'Mission accomplished'

It is not yet known what the so-called benchmarks for the Iraqi government will be, but they could include monitoring of Iraqi government cooperation with the US, requiring an Iraqi-run programme to disarm militias and an agreement on a plan to distribute oil revenues fairly.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox television that setting benchmarks for the Iraqi government "is the place where compromise would well be achieved".
Reacting to the veto, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the bill reflected the wishes of Americans to have benchmarks for what is happening in Iraq.

"We had hoped that the president would have treated it with the respect that bipartisan legislation supported overwhelmingly by the American people deserved.

"The president wants a blank cheque, the Congress is not going to give it to him," she said.

The Senate last week voted largely along party lines 51 to 46 in favour of the legislation, which said the pull-out must start by 1 October and sets a target of completion by 31 March 2008.

The veto coincided with the fourth anniversary of a speech in which Mr Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq over, standing beneath a banner proclaiming "mission accomplished".
This information is copied from www.bbc.co.uk

posted by mhai @ 9:43 AM