Against a background of worsening bloodshed and chaos in Iraq, a meeting between the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and President George W. Bush in Washington next week will take on the atmosphere of a crisis summit.
The two leading partners in the coalition in Iraq will focus their talks on Iraq and on Cyprus, where a referendum is scheduled for April 24th, officials said.
Iraq will dominate, however, as the US-led coalition is coming under serious strain, with several countries now on the verge of pulling out after the June 30th handover of sovereignty unless the United Nations takes over.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confirmed yesterday that despite assurances to military families that US troop levels in Iraq would be kept down to 115,000, the number had risen to 135,000 under cover of a rotation of units. There are "about 135,000" troops currently in Iraq due to an overlap, and commanders were using "the excess that happened to be there".
A senior official with US Central Command said that the return of about 24,000 US troops scheduled to leave in the next few weeks would be delayed while their replacements arrived. Mr Rumsfeld, who blamed "remnants" of the Saddam Hussein regime and terrorists for the fighting, also said that US military commanders in Iraq would get additional troops on request.
"They are the ones whose advice we follow on these things," he commented during an appearance in Norfolk, Virginia, with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
However, with US forces thinly deployed around the world, the Pentagon has few options for a significant increase in troop levels without a greater deployment of the already-stretched reserves.
At an emergency meeting on Monday, Gen John Abizaid, head of Central Command, ordered a study of which US troops at bases around the world could be moved quickly to Iraq.
The US Army's 4th Infantry, 101st Airborne, 1st Armoured, 82nd Airborne and 173rd Airborne units were scheduled to leave Iraq by May.
Mr de Hoop said that NATO was assisting the Polish unit in Iraq and suggested that the alliance would have an important role if a new Security Council resolution gave the UN a mandate after June 30th. The US-led coalition contains 8,200 British troops and 14,680 combat troops from 29 other countries, principally Poland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Spain and Holland plan to withdraw their 1,300-member contingents after June.
Units from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic may also leave. Guatemala has changed its mind about sending troops and South Korea has announced that the 3,600 troops it promised to send to Kirkuk to relieve the US 173rd Airborne will not go because of US pressure to participate in "offensive operations".
The Bush administration is being assailed by critics in both parties in Congress over the planning for the handover of sovereignty, with questions being asked about who will assume political responsibility after June 30th. The American administrator in Baghdad, Mr Paul Bremer, told US television that consultations were going on and that an Iraqi government would be ready to assume sovereignty.
"We have problems, there's no hiding that," he conceded. "But basically Iraq is on track to realise the kind of Iraq that Iraqis want and Americans want, which is a democratic Iraq."
How serious these problems are was underlined by a US official in Washington who told the Associated Press news agency that all American officials in Iraq, including those working for the Coalition Provisional Authority, had been told to remain inside their compounds since Monday.
The deteriorating situation and mounting US casualties in Iraq have driven Mr Bush's approval ratings to the lowest point of his presidency. Only 43 per cent of American voters now approve of his performance as president, compared to 47 per cent of US voters who disapprove, according to a poll by the Pew Research Centre in Washington.
A majority of Americans - 53 per cent - now disapprove of Mr Bush's policy in Iraq, up from 37 per cent in January. Some 57 per cent felt Mr Bush had no clear plan for Iraq. Fifty per cent of Americans said US troops should stay in Iraq, but 44 per cent - up from 32 per cent in January - thought they should be brought home. However, 57 per cent still think Mr Bush's decision to go to war was right.