US President George W. Bush disappointed many Iraqis by refusing to set a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in his policy speech at the beginning of his second four-year term.

While the interim Iraqi government did not officially comment on the speech, it repeatedly announced the US-led multinational forces should pull out after the Iraqi forces are capable of preserving security in the country on their own.

Such announcements were made by a number of Iraqi politicians before the Jan. 30 elections as part of their election campaign to gain votes.

A poll conducted before the elections showed 82 percent of the Sunni Arabs and 69 percent of the Shiites wanted the US forces to leave immediately or at least offer a specific time frame for a pullout.

However, in the State of the Union address Wednesday, Bush said his country would not determine a specific timetable for the American forces to leave because that would make the terrorists stronger.

"We will not set an artificial timetable for leaving Iraq, because that would embolden the terrorists and make them believe they can wait us out," said Bush.

Interim Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar also said it would be "nonsense" to expect the foreign forces to leave Iraq before the Iraqi forces are capable of handling the security affairs in the war-ravaged country.

However, many Iraqi groups demanded a quick withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq or at least a clear timetable for the withdrawal.

The Muslim Scholars Association, the most influential religious body among Iraq's Sunni Arabs, said the elections "are not the right choice for demanding the occupation troops to leave the country, and ... the Iraqi blood will keep bleeding as long as there is a constant American interference in the Iraqi affairs."

Abdul Hadi Al Daragy, a spokesman for a group led by the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said Thursday the presence of the US-led "occupation forces" would be the main obstacle to the start of any comprehensive national dialogue.

"The dialogue is an essential issue, but the problem remains in that the parties calling for the dialogue haven't make it a priority to demand a timetable for ending the occupation," he said.

Bush hailed the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq as a success, the first since Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in 2003, but Iraqis said they participated in the elections because they want an elected authority to demand a withdrawal.

"Iraqis who voted in the elections were doing so because they thought that the electoral process is a step on the way of making the American forces leave the country, and whoever listened to the speech of Bush was really disappointed," said Mohamed Salih Aswad, a lawyer who cast his vote in the elections.