Incoming US Senate leader vows to press Iraq withdrawal

[Ron Burgundy]

AFP - Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said in an interview that President George W. Bush had failed to grasp the urgent need to change course in Iraq and that US policy there currently "doesn't work."

Reid, whose Democratic Party won control of the US Congress in last week's elections, also vowed in the Washington Post interview to press quickly for phased withdrawals of US troops in Iraq, the newspaper said Wednesday.

Democrats must respond to voter anger over the war in Iraq, which swept them into power in the November 7 election, with hearings to pressure the Bush administration and with calls for a regional Middle Eastern conference and a revitalized Iraqi reconstruction effort, Reid said, according to the Post.

But Reid said the Democrats, who take over Congress from Bush's Republicans in January, will not use their new budgetary power to tighten the war's purse strings to force Bush to move, according to the Post.

The Democrats, however, will use their ability to hold hearings to stoke public opinion and drive the debate, he said.

"My displeasure with the president, he doesn't understand the urgency of this," Reid was quoted as saying. "It's all victory for him, but I don't know what that means anymore in Iraq. I do know what we are doing now doesn't work."

Reid also said one of the first acts of the Democratic Congress will be to boost the military budget by 75 billion dollars to try to get the army's diminished units back into combat shape, the Post said.

The Nevada lawmaker, who Democrats elected as majority leader on Tuesday, will head a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate.

Bush reiterated Monday his opposition to a fixed timetable for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.