U.S. Democratic leaders in the Senate have vowed to use their new congressional majority to press for troop reductions in Iraq within months, U.S. media reported Monday.

The Democrats - the incoming majority leader, Senator Harry Reid; the incoming Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin; and the incoming Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Senator Joseph R. Biden - said Sunday that a phased redeployment of troops would be their top priority when the new Congress convenes in January, even before an investigation of the conduct of the war.

"We need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months," Levin said in an appearance on the ABC News program "This Week."

Reid also said on CBS television that U.S. troop redeployment from Iraq should start within the next few months.

The White House has said President George W. Bush was open to " fresh ideas," but chief of staff Joshua Bolten said he could not envision the White House signing on to a plan setting a timetable for the withdrawal of troops.

"I don't think we're going to be receptive to the notion there's a fixed timetable at which we automatically pull out, because that could be a true disaster for the Iraqi people. But what we've always been prepared to do, and remain prepared to do, is indeed what Senators Levin and Biden were talking about, is put pressure on the Iraqi government to take over themselves," he told the ABC television.

On Monday, a bipartisan panel, the Iraq Study Group, headed by former secretary of state James A. Baker III, a Republican, and Lee Hamilton, a Democratic former congressman, would meet Bush and members of his foreign policy team to begin its final round of interviews.

The group, which will also interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair by videoconference and meet with Democratic foreign policy leaders, is expected to make recommendations on the government's Iraq policy, probably next month or early next year.

Source: Xinhua