Bush to accept Iraq withdrawal timetable

After years of denouncing timetables for a US withdrawal from Iraq, US President George W. Bush seemed poised Friday to accept late 2011 as a target date for a complete US troop pull-out.
The top Iraqi negotiator told AFP in Baghdad that the tentative accord calls for all US combat troops to be out of Iraqi cities by next June and US forces gone from the war-torn country by the end of 2011.
The White House, which had in the past described setting a firm withdrawal date as a "surrender" to Islamist extremists, rejected any talk of a dramatic policy reversal as the first details of the accord trickled out on Thursday.
Talks on ending the US occupation are possible only "because of the security gains that have been realized since the president ordered five additional brigades and Marines into Iraq last January," said spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
And US officials say that the timeframe is a target, not a hard-and-fast deadline, and will require sustained progress on the political, economic and security fronts.
"The president and every American wants to see American troops come home, but not until the job is done and there is more security, more political progress, and more economic progress inside Iraq," Johndroe said Thursday.