Democrats drop Iraq withdrawal plan

Democrats drop Iraq withdrawal plan
© Reuters Limited
May 22, 22:20


President George W. Bush won a battle over nearly $100bn to fund the Iraq war as congressional Democrats on Tuesday abandoned troop withdrawal efforts for now but pledged to try again in July.

Instead of setting schedules for withdrawing US troops, it appeared the Democratic-run Congress and the Republican White House agreed for the first time to include conditions prodding Baghdad to make better progress toward quelling violence or risk losing some US reconstruction aid.

“We’ve been led to believe that that is the language that is likely to be in the final version,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told reporters.

That provision passed the Senate last week, with a few Democrats supporting it. At the time, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said of the language crafted by Virginia Republican Senator John Warner: “If you look in the dictionary under ‘weak’ the Warner amendment would be listed under it.”

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the measure would provide “the funding and flexibility the forces need. That’s what we’ve wanted all along.”

On May 1, Mr Bush vetoed Congress’ first version of this year’s emergency war funds bill because it set an October 1 deadline for starting to pull most of the 147,000 soldiers out of Iraq, a goal of anti-war Democrats.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said lawmakers were putting the finishing touches on a new bill, and acknowledged the political realities.

“The president has made it very clear he’s not going to sign timelines (for withdrawing troops). We can’t pass timelines over his veto,” he told reporters.