Democratic leaders in the US Congress offered major concessions
on Friday over a war spending bill that would provide money for the
Iraq war, but the offers were rejected by the White House.
After a close-door meeting with top White House aides on Capital
Hill, Democratic leaders said the White House said "no" to
everything they proposed.
"To say I was disappointed in the meeting is an understatement,"
said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from
Nevada..
Democratic leaders offered to strip from a war spending bill
billions of US dollars in domestic spending that was opposed by
President George W. Bush, if the White House agreed to a withdrawal
timetable in the bill. They also offered to give the president
authority to waiver compliance with a timetable to pull out US
troops out of Iraq.
But the offers were declined by the White House, and no
agreement emerged.
White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten, who rejected the deal
at the meeting, said any timetable would send the wrong signal to
the enemies of the United States. "Whether waivable or not,
timelines send exactly the wrong signal to our adversaries, to our
allies and, most importantly, to the troops in the field," he
said.
Even without agreement with the White House, Democrats said they
would try to pass a bill next week to provide funding to US troops
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not rule out the bill would
contain a withdrawal timetable. "Nothing is off the table. The one
thing that has to be on the table is accountability and this
administration has never been willing to be accountable for this
war in Iraq," she said.
The Congress was trying to approve nearly 100 billion dollars to
fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, but the
Democratic-led legislature and the White House differed over
whether any conditions should be attached to that money.
A war spending bill passed the Congress last month, which would
have required the Bush administration to start withdrawing US
troops from Iraq by Oct. 1, with a goal of ending US combat
operations there by next March, but the bill was vetoed by
Bush.
(Xinhua News Agency May 19, 2007)
