WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, Nov 30: A high-level bipartisan advisory group will call for a major withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, shifting the US role from combat to support and advising, US media reported on Thursday.

The Iraq Study Group, a 10-person panel appointed on March 15 by the US Congress, is charged with delivering an independent assessment of the situation in Iraq and the US-led Iraq war.

The group concluded two days of consultations in Washington on Wednesday with a consensus on a final report that calls for a gradual withdrawal of US troops and changing the US role.

The group, however, would stop short of setting a firm timetable for the troops’ withdrawal, as opposition Democrats who won a majority in this month’s congressional elections demand.

But it will support the Democratic position that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended, media reports said.

“This afternoon, we reached a consensus ... and we will announce that on Dec 6,” the panel’s co-chairman, former Democratic congressman and co-chair of the 9-11 commission, Lee Hamilton, told reporters.

“We’re making recommendations,” said Mr Hamilton, who led the Iraq Study Group with former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a Republican. The group is evenly divided between America’s two main political parties.

The final report is described as a centrist document that offers a blunt critique of Iraq’s worsening situation while calling for a continued — though not indefinite — American commitment.

Democratic and Republican panel members have complained privately of political pressure, with both the parties trying to tilt the report close to its own position on Iraq. While the Democrats want the withdrawal to begin in four to six months, the Republicans says that setting any deadline for withdrawal would be a disaster for Iraq.

Media reports, quoting sources within the ISG, said the panel would call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American brigades now in Iraq, but the reports did not specify whether the brigades, numbering 3,000 to 5,000 troops each, should be pulled back to isolated bases in Iraq or to neighbouring countries.

Media reports said it might be possible in a year or two to halve the US military presence, to about 70,000 troops.

Some media reports suggested that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter to the American people, made public on Wednesday, was timed to coincide with the ISG’s deliberations in Washington.

In this letter, Mr Ahmadinejad tries to convince the American people that the Bush administration’s positions on issues like a larger Middle East settlement, an independent Palestine state and the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq have damaged America’s image in the Middle East.

The ISG report will urge President Bush to make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.

The bulk of the report focused on a recommendation that the United States devise a far more aggressive diplomatic initiative in the Middle East than President Bush has been willing to try so far, including direct engagement with Iran and Syria.

Initially, those contacts might be part of a regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues, like the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they would ultimately involve direct, high-level talks with Tehran and Damascus.

If President Bush adopts the recommendations, far more American training teams would be embedded with Iraqi forces, a last-ditch effort to make the Iraqi Army more capable of fighting alone, media reports said.

The ISG also will offer military commanders greater flexibility to determine the timing and phasing of the pullback of the combat brigades.

The release of its report next week will combine with the Senate confirmation hearings for President Bush’s nominee for defence secretary, former study group member Robert M. Gates, to bring new emphasis to the intensifying debate over the future of the US presence in Iraq.

The panel, which began deliberations in April, was organised jointly by four think tanks and funded with $1 million from Congress. It is run by the U.S. Institute of Peace.