U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that Washington could start withdrawing troops from Iraq later this year if the new strategy on Iraq works.

"But if you lower the level of sectarian violence significantly, some of these political commitments that have been made before and not met are met, then you could have a situation later this year where you could actually begin withdrawing," he said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

President George W. Bush announced his new Iraq policy on Wednesday, which included sending 21,500 additional U.S. troops to Iraq to help quell violence in the war-torn country.

"If these operations actually work, you could begin to see a lightening of the U.S. footprint both in Baghdad and potentially in Iraq itself," Gates said.

Lawmakers, particularly Democrats, have questioned whether Bush 's plan for more troops for Iraq could end violence there.

They argued that the plan relied too heavily on the Iraqi government keeping its promises it had failed to keep before.

At the White House, spokesman Tony Snow admitted that many members of Congress were skeptical of Bush's plan, but insisted that the plan would go forward.

"Funding for the forces and to dispatch them to the region, it's already in the budget. So we're going to proceed with those plans," he said.

Source: Xinhua