US President George W Bush is under pressure on two fronts as calls grow in Iraq for early elections while at home his pre-war assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction faces mounting criticism.
UN Secretary-General Mr Kofi Annan is expected to announce whether he will send a team to Iraq to explore the feasibility of early elections to replace an unpopular US plan to choose a government through regional caucuses. UN security experts are already in Iraq assessing the situation.
Violence continued unabated in Iraq where guerrillas fired a rocket at the Baghdad compound yesterday where the US-led administration is based, but there were no casualties.
The White House pledged to review the intelligence that was used to justify the war that toppled Saddam Hussein last April after the senior US weapons hunter concluded Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.
In an embarrassment for Mr Bush, former chief US weapons hunter David Kay concluded Iraq did not have stockpiles of banned weapons as Mr Bush had said in declaring that the country was a grave and gathering danger.
Democrats have accused Mr Bush of using faulty intelligence - if not twisting the intelligence - on the extent of Iraq's weapons programme as a pretext for war.