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WASHINGTON - US Senate Republicans blocked a proposal to give American troops in Iraq more rest from battle, as Democrats renewed their attempts to change President George W Bush's Iraq policy.
While the White House won this initial skirmish on a military policy bill, it lost support of seven of Bush's fellow Republicans in the Senate's vote on requiring minimum rest times between troop deployments. Six of the Republicans are up for re-election next year.
Trying to calm dissent among a growing number of Republicans over the war, the White House dispatched national security adviser Stephen Hadley to Capitol Hill for the second straight day, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned lawmakers.
Rice and Hadley urged senators to back Bush's determination to wait until September for an evaluation of the mission by Gen David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, instead of embracing some lawmakers' attempts to impose change now.
"Basically the White House position is we should wait to hear from General Petraeus before we take another step," said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Republican co-sponsor of one of the more modest proposals for change, who attended a session with Hadley.
Seven Republicans joined 48 Democrats and one independent to vote for a plan by Virginia Sen James Webb to insure that US troops, many of whom have endured multiple deployments to Iraq, get adequate time at home between tours of duty.
But that was still four votes short of the 60 needed on the motion, a procedural hurdle erected by Republicans.
Webb, a former Marine, argued that his plan did not explicitly alter Iraq policy. But Republicans saw it as a "backdoor way to hamstring" deployments, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said.
Webb's amendment was thought to have had more appeal to Republicans than others that explicitly require a timetable for withdrawal, and the outcome underscored difficulties Democrats face getting 60 votes for any of their pullout proposals to be debated this month.
Democrats pilloried Republicans for insisting that all war-related amendments scale the 60-vote procedural hurdle in the 100-member Senate.
"Some of my Republican colleagues are protecting their president rather than protecting our troops," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.
But Reid said he would not pull anti-war proposals from the floor, adding that Republicans who have made headlines by criticising the war should vote for a new policy now.
"Waiting until September is not the answer ... Our votes, not our voices, will determine whether we reject President Bush's failed policy," Reid said.
He said the Senate will soon take up the most stringent proposal - requiring a US troop drawdown to finish by April 30. But that vote might not happen until next week.
The House of Representatives Democratic leadership meanwhile said it would take up a similar bill this week, in what some saw as an effort to goad the Senate into action.
Alexander's proposal, co-sponsored by Democrat Sen Ken Salazar of Colorado, embraces recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group which called for a possible troop drawdown in the spring.
But although Alexander and Salazar have more than a half-dozen sponsors in each party, their plan was under assault from both Democrats and the White House. Reid derided the idea as weak, saying "it doesn't have the teeth of a toothless tiger."
- REUTERS
