US: President George Bush has ruled out direct talks with Iran about the future of Iraq unless Tehran suspends its nuclear programme of uranium enrichment.
Speaking at the White House after a meeting with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, Mr Bush dampened speculation that Washington was preparing to engage with Iran and Syria as part of a new strategy in Iraq.
"If the Iranians want to have a dialogue with us, we have shown them a way forward, and that is for them to verify - verifiably suspend their enrichment activities," he said.
Earlier Mr Bush met the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan committee that is considering US policy options in Iraq, including a regional conference with Iraq's neighbours. The group's deliberations are secret but its members have already held discussions with Syria and Iran about possible co-operation over Iraq.
White House press secretary Tony Snow described the meeting as a conversation in which both sides shared views, adding that it was not a presentation of alternatives but rather an assessment of the present situation on the ground in Iraq. "This is not a deposition," he said.
Vice president Dick Cheney, national security adviser Stephen Hadley and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten were at the meeting in the Oval Office. Later yesterday, the Iraq Study Group met outgoing secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, national intelligence director John Negroponte, CIA director Michael Hayden, US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalizad and General George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq.
British prime minister Tony Blair is due to talk to the group today.
Chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the Iraq Study Group has the backing of both the White House and Congress in its search for a new approach to the war. Mr Baker hopes to publish a report next month that has the support of all 10 members of the group, but he has recently sought to play down expectations, stressing that there is no "magic bullet" that can resolve the crisis in Iraq.
The group has met Syrian officials three times and Mr Baker had a three-hour dinner in New York with Iran's UN ambassador, Javad Zarif.
Emboldened by last week's election victory, Democrats have stepped up calls for a timetable for withdrawing US forces from Iraq. Carl Levin, who is set to become the new chairman of the Senate armed services committee, said this week that a phased withdrawal should begin within four to six months.
"We have to tell Iraqis that the open-ended commitment is over," he said.
Other Democrats are more cautious about setting a timetable, although some military commanders believe that a timetable for withdrawal could be the most effective way of putting pressure on Iraq's government to make political progress and to disarm militias.
Republican senator John McCain, who is expected to take the first steps this week towards a 2008 presidential bid, wants to increase US troop levels in Iraq to make a final effort to impose order on Baghdad.
"I believe that there are a lot of things that we can do to salvage this, but they all require the presence of additional troops. The question, then, before the American people is, 'are we ready to quit?' And I believe the consequences of failure are chaos in the region, which will spread," he told NBC's Meet the Press.
US military commanders have launched their own review of strategy in Iraq, as the Senate armed services committee prepares to hold hearings into the military campaign tomorrow.
"I think we have to maintain our focus on what objectives we want for the United States, and then we need to give ourselves a good, honest scrub about what is working and what is not working, what are the impediments to progress, and what should we change about the way we're doing it to ensure that we get to the objective that we've set for ourselves," said General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
Mr Olmert said yesterday that the US and Israel were united in their approach to Iran and he praised the US operation in Iraq.
"We in the Middle East have followed the American policy in Iraq for a long time, and we are very much impressed and encouraged by the stability which the great operation of America in Iraq brought to the Middle East," he said.