President George W. Bush on Saturday pressed US lawmakers to give him a war-funding bill with "flexibility" while Democrats insisted they would not abandon their effort to force him to change course in Iraq.
The comments suggested entrenched positions four days after Bush vetoed a $124 billion war-spending measure that would have required a troop pullout from Iraq to begin by October 1.
Democratic leaders are in closed-door negotiations with White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and other senior aides to the Republican president to see if they can reach agreement on a second bill.
"In this time of war, our elected officials have no higher responsibility than to provide these troops with the funds and flexibility they need to prevail," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
The Democrats' bill was an attempt to "make a statement about their opposition to the war," Bush said. "Now it is time to give our troops the resources they are waiting for." Opposition to the Iraq war is very strong among Democrats who believe their victory in November's congressional elections gave them a mandate to demand a change in Bush's Iraq policy.
But many are reluctant at this point to take the step of cutting off all funds for a war in which 3,300 Americans and countless Iraqis have been killed. Without citing Bush by name, Senator Charles Schumer of New York rejected any suggestion that the Democrats' goal of reducing the US troop presence in Iraq was incompatible with supporting the soldiers.
In fact, he said that shifting the mission in Iraq from one of "policing a civil war" to one of training Iraqi soldiers would benefit US troops and the country.
"It's simply not the job of America or our troops to stand in the middle of a civil war as Sunnis and Shi'ites shoot at each other and pay no heed to the central government while our troops are caught in the crosshairs," Schumer said, adding that Democrats would not give up their effort to change Bush's Iraq policy.
"No amount of name calling, hyperbole or imputation that we don't support the troops will deter us from these goals," he said. The Bush administration says an infusion of funds for the Iraq war is needed soon, but Democrats argue that the US Army has enough money to finance the campaign through most of July.
A compromise will not be easy. Among ideas circulating on Capitol Hill were "benchmarks" for measuring the Iraqi government's progress in stabilising the country, where violence has been particularly gruesome recently. The White House opposes any approach that would punish the Iraqi government with a loss of aid or US troop withdrawals if the goals are not met.
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