WASHINGTON, Nov 12: The opposition Democrats urged the Bush administration on Sunday to begin a phased withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in four to six months but the White House said it would not welcome any demand for setting a timetable.

The White House, however, announced that President George W. Bush and his national security team are meeting the bipartisan Iraq Study Group on Monday and would welcome ‘fresh approaches’ to the issue.

The Democrats, who captured both chambers of the US Congress in Tuesday’s mid-term elections, launched their campaign on Sunday to bring public pressure on President Bush to change the course in Iraq.

In a series of TV appearances, senior Democratic lawmakers indicated that some Republican legislators also have agreed to support a bipartisan move for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

"The first order of business is to change the direction of Iraq policy," said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is expected to head the Senate Armed Services Committee in the new Congress.

"We need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months," Senator Levin said.

Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat who is expected to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Democrats wanted to achieve their target by bringing enough “international and domestic” pressure on President Bush to set a timetable. “And most importantly the pressure coming from his own Republican colleagues, we have spoken to some major figures in the Republican Party and they are ready to join” a bipartisan move for setting a timeline for troop-withdrawal.

Asked to disclose the names of those Republican lawmakers who supported their move, Senator Biden said: “I can but I will not.”

The White House, however, rejected the proposal for setting a timetable. "I don't think we're going to be receptive to the notion that there's a fixed timetable at which we automatically pull out,” said White House chief of staff Josh Bolten. “That could be a true disaster for the Iraqi people.”

Any solution to the Iraqi issue, he said, should be implemented in a way that allows the Iraqi government to “succeed, sustain itself, defend itself and remain an ally in the war against terror”.

The White House chief of staff insisted that America’s “objective is victory in Iraq. It is absolutely necessary that we win this war”.

But Democrats rejected the suggestion. Senator Levin said that in Tuesday’s elections the American people “spoke dramatically, overwhelmingly and resoundingly” against the war. He said that the Americans have rejected the administration’s notion of “an absolute victory or full-speed ahead”, as advocated by President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.

“We are going to urge the president in a bipartisan way to set some milestones so that we can begin redeployment in four to six months,” he insisted.

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at Washington’s Brookings Institute, told ABC News that President Bush may accept the Democratic suggestion for talking to Iraq’s neighbours.

He believes that the Bush administration will try to get Syria and Iran to support moves for restoring peace to Iraq.

Despite exit poll figures indicating that a majority of American voters would support withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Mr O'Hanlon said that may not be possible for President Bush. "I think that's essentially an admission of defeat, if you make that your top priority and you do it too quickly," he said.

President Bush and his national security team are expected to discuss these and various other proposals on Monday with an independent bipartisan commission appointed to examine new ideas to solve the Iraqi impasse.

SUICIDE BOMBING: Two suicide bombers attacked a Baghdad police commando base on Sunday, killing 35 young men waiting to join the force, as Prime Miniter Nuri al-Maliki called for a cabinet reshuffle to stem the bloodshed.—AFP