WASHINGTON, Sept 15: US President George Bush on Saturday defended plans for a limited draw-down of US forces from Iraq, one day after a White House report undercut claims of security and political progress there.

In his weekly radio address, Bush said the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the US ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, said US-led troops face “formidable challenges” to stabilising the war-torn country.

“Yet they also said that security conditions are improving, that our forces are seizing the initiative from the enemy, and that the troop surge is working,” he said, referring to his January military escalation.

As a result, he said, some 5,700 US troops will come home by Christmas, and the number of combat brigades will drop from 20 to 15 —a fall of about 21,500 combat troops — by mid-2008.

“The more successful we are, the more troops can return home,” said Bush, whom critics have accused of portraying a slightly hastened version of the way that the “surge” had been scheduled to end as a new policy.

The president, whose Iraq strategy faces almost two-to-one opposition in major opinion polls, warned that a hasty US withdrawal there would have costly repercussions for US national security.

“If we were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened. Al Qaeda could find new recruits and new sanctuaries,” said Bush, who has increasingly played up the role the terrorist group, and Iran, allegedly play in fostering violence in Iraq. “By contrast, a free Iraq will deny Al Qaeda a safe haven. It will counter the destructive ambitions of Iran. And it will serve as a partner in the fight against terrorism,” he said.—AFP