US:Democrats in Congress have abandoned an attempt to link funding for the war in Iraq to a timetable for withdrawal and will today vote on a plan to fund the war until the end of September. As Republicans celebrated what they described as a Democratic capitulation on the war, House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would vote against her own party's Bill.
President George Bush vetoed a war-funding Bill on May 1st because it included a timetable for withdrawal and allocated billions of dollars to domestic projects that had little or nothing to do with Iraq.
The new Bill includes benchmarks on progress for the Iraqi government but Democrats acknowledged that the benchmarks may not be enforceable.
"We just surrendered," said Virginia congressman Jim Moran.
Although the climbdown represents a major disappointment for anti-war Democrats, the party leadership in Congress is determined to send a new war-funding Bill to the president this week.
"Democrats have finally conceded defeat in their effort to include mandatory surrender dates in a funding Bill for the troops, so forward progress has been made for the first time in this four-month process," said House Republican leader John Boehner.
Ms Pelosi insisted that the Bill was a step towards ending the war, even if she is not willing to support it herself.
"I'm not likely to vote for something that doesn't have a timetable or a goal of coming home," she said.
With a number of Democrats in the House of Representatives preparing to follow Ms Pelosi's lead, the party will need Republican votes to pass the Bill, the first time such support has been necessary since the Democrats took control of Congress after last November's elections.
Democrats have vowed to force repeated votes to demonstrate their opposition to Mr Bush's war policy, and both houses of Congress will vote on the 2008 defence budget within the next few weeks.
A major showdown is likely in September, when the new funding for the war will run out.
Some Republicans have told Mr Bush that he will not be able to rely on their support after September unless clear progress is visible in Iraq.
Massachusetts Democratic congressman Jim McGovern said that Republicans would eventually cave in to popular pressure to end the war, which most Americans now believe was a mistake.
"I don't think they can continue to vote against their district on the issue of Iraq and get re-elected," he said.
As anti-war groups urged Democrats to reject the compromise war-funding bill, Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold, a vocal critic of the war, condemned the deal.
"I cannot support a bill that contains nothing more than toothless benchmarks and that allows the president to continue what may be the greatest foreign policy blunder in our nation's history," he said.