U.S. President George W. Bush met on Monday with a bipartisan panel reviewing the administration's Iraq strategy, and said he was looking forward to seeing the group's recommendations.

Bush said he was not sure what the report the Iraq Study Group was expected to submit next month was going to say, but he was "looking forward to seeing it."

"I'm not going to prejudge" the report, he told reporters after meeting with the group at the White House.

The president said the U.S. goal in Iraq remained "a government that can sustain, govern and defend itself and serve as an ally in this war on terror," and he was impressed by the questions the panel asked.

The group, headed by former secretary of state James A. Baker III, a Republican, and Lee Hamilton, a Democratic former congressman, was to meet Bush and members of his foreign policy team, including Vice President Dick Cheney, the president's national security adviser, secretaries of the state and defense departments, and the national intelligence chief and the CIA chief, to begin its final round of interviews.

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

Democratic leaders in the Senate have vowed to use their new congressional majority to press for troop reductions in Iraq within months.

Democratic Senator Carl Levin, who was to become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee when the 110th Congress convenes early January next year, said on Monday that group's report would have "an impact on whatever action might be possible in this Congress and in the next Congress."

The first priority for the Armed Services Committee would be to find a way forward to "change the course in Iraq," he said at a news conference.

Source: Xinhua