January 10, 2007	Wednesday	Zilhaj 19, 1427

WASHINGTON, Jan 9: Chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee said on Tuesday that he expects President Bush to announce the deployment of additional 20,000 Americans troops to Iraq in his address to the nation on Wednesday.

Senator Carl Levin said that Mr Bush will not say how long the extra forces will remain in Iraq but he will signal that the overall US commitment in Iraq is not open-ended.

Mr Levin, who became the committee’s chairman last week following a Democratic victory in the midterm congressional poll, said the Democrats will only support the plan if Mr Bush tells the Iraqis that the US will redeploy its forces if they fail to control the situation.

“We've got to focus the attention of the Iraqis on their responsibility for their own country,” Mr Levin told reporters after a meeting with White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley. “The only way to tell them is that we're going to redeploy our forces in four to six months.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, who met Mr Bush on Monday evening, told The New York Times that the troop increase — coming at a time when polls show that six out of 10 Americans think the war is not worth fighting — was just one element of a larger change in strategy.

Mr Bush's plan is also expected to include a number of specific goals for Mr al-Maliki's government, such as bringing more Sunnis into the political process and legislation that would fairly distribute Iraqi oil revenue to all regions.

The most striking part of that plan is a commitment to confront the Mahdi Army, the biggest militia in Baghdad recently identified by the Pentagon as the most destabilising force in Iraq's sectarian conflict. Until now Mr al-Maliki has been noticeably reluctant to fight the Mahdi Army for fear of losing control of his government altogether.

President Bush spent Tuesday putting the final touches to his speech which analysts says could be the most important speech of his political career.