Iraq Study Group to meet Bush before unveiling report

Story Highlights

• Bush to meet group urging changes in Iraq hours before report is released
• President has lunch Tuesday with group co-chairman James Baker
• White House downplays report, citing other groups analyzing Iraq
• Group expected to urge talks with neighbors, gradual pullout with no timetable

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Before making its recommendations on Iraq strategy public, a bipartisan group that has spent months studying the situation will meet with President Bush on Wednesday morning.

Former Secretary of State James Baker, co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, met with Bush for lunch Tuesday, the White House said.

Baker, a Republican, and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton head the committee that has been studying policies and strategies in Iraq. At Wednesday's hour-long meeting, the 10-member committee will present its report and make recommendations.

The bipartisan group also is to meet with the Senate Armed Services Committee at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, said the committee's chairman, Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican.

Bush's nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, former CIA Director Robert Gates, won approval Tuesday from the Senate Armed Services Committee after one day of testimony. The full Senate will begin debating his nomination Wednesday.

Gates told senators that "the status quo isn't acceptable" in Iraq and "all options are on the table" to address the situation there. (Full story)

Gates, a former member of the Iraq Study Group, said he doubts the group's report will be "the last word."

"It's my impression that, frankly, there are no new ideas on Iraq. ... The list of approaches is pretty much out there," he said.

The domestic debates come as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pushed Cabinet changes of his own, while dozens of Iraqis died in a series of attacks and the U.S. military death toll reached 2,900. (Full story)

Al-Maliki also proposed holding regional and domestic conferences aimed at national unity and stability in Iraq, which is beset by an increasingly bloody sectarian conflict.

The Iraq Study Group is expected to recommend Washington approach Iraq's neighbors, including Iran, which would be at odds with current U.S. policy.

In his testimony, Gates left open the possibility of an international conference that includes Iran and Syria.

"In the long run, we are going to have to acknowledge the influence of Iraq's neighbors," he said. "The forum in which we try to engage that and how we do it and when we do it clearly are issues to be determined."

Expectations downplayed

The White House on Tuesday downplayed expectations for the report.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said that any suggestion that the Baker-Hamilton group's report would provide "a magic bullet" to end the conflict in Iraq "is probably placing an unfair burden" on the study group.

"They're taking a look at a highly complex situation," he said.

"No doubt, whatever recommendations are made by the Hamilton-Baker commission, by [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen.] Pete Pace, by the [National Security Council], by the State Department, you're still going to need to continue to make adjustments based on the facts on the ground."

Snow said that none of the reviews of policy coming in, including the Baker-Hamilton report, would predicate a change in the U.S. mission in Iraq, which is and will remain building "an Iraq that can govern, sustain and defend itself."

Sources close to the study group, formed at the urging of Congress, told CNN last week that its recommendations will include a gradual drawing down of U.S. troops in Iraq but not a specific timetable for doing so.

The sources said the group will suggest that the president needs to insist that al-Maliki meet benchmarks to improve the situation on the ground and that Bush should communicate to him that there will soon be substantial troop reductions.

One official noted that a time frame was "such a thorny issue" for the commissioners to sort through. But an adviser to the study group said the panel's report will make it clear that U.S. troops "can't be there forever."

A second group adviser said that five basic options were on the table, ranging from a stay-the-course approach to a plan offering a timetable for troop withdrawal -- and that commissioners seem to have settled on what insiders jokingly referred to as the "2.5 option," a blend of the various proposals.

A U.S. commander in Iraq on Tuesday pronounced the coming year as a year of coalition transition to Iraq and its security forces.

"We are going to transition the security responsibilities for this country to the government of Iraq and to their security forces," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told reporters. "I think what you'll find the year of 2007 truly is going to be the year of transition."

After meeting with Bush, the study group will brief members of Congress and then hold a news conference at 11 a.m. Wednesday. The report will be published on the Web site of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Baker served as secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush. Hamilton, the former congressman from Indiana, has chaired both the House Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 commission.

Gates was replaced on the panel by Lawrence Eagleburger, who succeeded Baker as secretary of state in the first Bush administration. (Who's who in the group)

The other members of the Iraq Study Group are businessman Vernon Jordan Jr., former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Virginia Gov. Charles Robb and former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming.

The group was formed in March 2006.