Thursday November 30, 2006 11:16 AM
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - A bipartisan commission next week will unveil long-awaited recommendations for a new U.S. policy in Iraq that a published report said would call for a gradual pullback of U.S. troops there - without a timetable - and direct diplomacy with Iran and Syria.
Such recommendations would require a shift in policy for the Bush administration that President Bush has shown no hint of implementing.
``This business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all,'' he said Thursday at a news conference in Jordan.
Without any specific reference to the commission, Bush acknowledged a general pressure for U.S. troop withdrawals but said, ``We'll be in Iraq until the job is complete, at the request of a sovereign government elected by the people.''
The panel's co-chairman, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., said Wednesday that the group has reached a consensus and would announce its proposals next Wednesday.
Hamilton declined to disclose any specifics about the group's decisions. The much-anticipated report is coming out amid spiraling violence in Iraq that has raised questions about the viability of the Iraqi government.
``This afternoon, we reached a consensus ... and we will announce that on Dec. 6,'' Hamilton told a forum on national security at the Center for American Progress, a liberal group.
``We're making recommendations,'' said Hamilton, who led the Iraq Study Group with former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a Republican.
The New York Times reported on its Web site Wednesday night that the study group will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American brigades now in Iraq, but will stop short of setting a specific timetable for their withdrawal.
The Times, citing unidentified people familiar with the report, said it does not state whether the brigades, numbering 3,000 to 5,000 troops each, should be pulled back to isolated bases in Iraq or to neighboring countries.
Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman the National Security Council traveling with Bush in Jordan, said the White House had not yet been given any advance briefing about what the group would recommend and had no comment on the Times report.
Defense officials, meanwhile, said the Pentagon is developing plans to send four more battalions to Iraq early next year, including some to Baghdad. The extra combat engineer units of Army reserves would total about 3,500 troops and would come from around the United States, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deployments have not been announced.
The units would provide support for other combat troops, but their specific missions were not disclosed.
The study group is expected to recommend regional talks involving Syria and Iran. The administration has been reluctant to engage those two countries, which it says have abetted the violence in Iraq.
It was unclear exactly what the group would recommend regarding possible U.S. troop withdrawals, an issue that proved divisive during meetings this week. The members - five Democrats and five Republicans - were split over the appropriate U.S. troop levels in Iraq, and whether and how to pull American forces out, according to one official close to the panel's deliberations.
A second official has said the commission was unlikely to propose a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. troops, but that some members seem to favor setting a date for an initial withdrawal. That is an idea favored by many congressional Democrats.
There are currently about 139,000 U.S. troops in Iraq; some 20,000 are in and around Baghdad, the capital.
At a news conference Wednesday, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would not say whether more troops were planned for Baghdad. He did say that was among the ideas that commanders were debating.
He also said there was no plan to shift all troops from the volatile Anbar province into Baghdad.
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Associated Press writers Beverley Lumpkin and Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6249151,00.html
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