Washington - President George W Bush has decided to end the US troop buildup in Iraq by next summer, but he has no immediate plans for further force cuts, administration officials said Thursday. Bush's move, which he planned to unveil in a nationally televised speech late Thursday, involves a pullout of some 30,000 US soldiers by July 2008. That would cut back US troop strength to the level of roughly 130,000 in Iraq before Bush ordered this year's so-called surge.
Under the plan, an initial 5,700 troops would come home from Iraq by Christmas, an administration official told reporters.
Bush's plan stops far short of the firm timetable for a full withdrawal demanded by war critics in Congress. Instead, he is asking his top general in Iraq to report back on the security situation next March.
"The more we succeed, the more troops we can bring home from Iraq," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity prior to the address.
Bush also planned to encourage Iraqis to press Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government to break the impasse on reconciliation between ethnic and religious groups.
Bush's challenge is to find positive prospects for Iraq for a war- weary US public, shore up support in his Republican Party and blunt Democratic critics who say he is pursuing a wrong-headed, open-ended war.
But polls illustrate the magnitude of Bush's task. A CBS-New York Times survey released Thursday said that 71 per cent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the war and 26 per cent approve.
The White House says the extra troops - and a US drive to win over Sunni tribal leaders to fight al-Qaeda, notably in Anbar province - have lessened attacks on US and Iraqi forces.
"We are starting to see some success. We have broken the cycle of violence," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Thursday.
But in Iraq, a Sunni leader who joined forces with other Anbar tribes to fight al-Qaeda militants in Iraq was killed Thursday by a bomb blast near his house in Ramadi, media reports said.
Authorities imposed a state of emergency in Ramadi, 110 kilometres west of Baghdad, after Abdel-Sattar Abu Risha was killed following al-Qaeda death threats against him, al-Arabiya television reported.
Bush met Abu Risha during a surprise visit to Anbar this month.
Bush's prime-time speech was designed as the climax of a new push to convince largely sceptical Americans that US troops must remain in Iraq for the time being.
In highly anticipated testimony to Congress, the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said that the troop surge could end by mid-July - the recommendation underlying Bush's speech.
Democrats hold slim majorities in the US Congress but have lacked the votes to legislate an end to the war.
Democratic leaders accused Petraeus of setting the stage for "an open-ended presence" in Iraq and criticized Bush's speech, widely previewed in US media, as nothing new.
The White House blasted back, insisting US involvement "is not an open-ended commitment."
