By DPA
Washington : The Bush administration is working up several plans that would reduce US combat forces in Iraq by one-third or more by mid-2008, The New York Times reported Saturday.
Unnamed sources engaged in closed-door discussions within the administration told the newspaper that the concepts could lower levels to 100,000 from the current 146,000 by mid-year, when the US would be in the throes of its next presidential election.
Recent troop levels were reported as high as 160,000.
President George W. Bush has fought setting any deadlines for withdrawal, and forced Congress to remove a timeline for winding down the deployment by 2008 in funding legislation passed and signed this week.
The Democrat-controlled Congress failed to muster a two-thirds majority to override his veto.
The Times said that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defence Robert Gates are backing a troop reduction by next year.
The Bush administration is frustrated that Iraqi leaders have failed to work to settle differences between the Shia and Sunni factions, and recently criticized plans by the Iraqi Parliament to take a two-month summer vacation amid escalating violence and the deployment of more US troops.
The White House is also under increasing pressure from Republicans in Congress to change the course in Iraq.
In a related development, a Senate panel Friday released an intelligence report that showed US spy agencies had anticipated the surge of violence and terrorism and ethnic animosities that have plagued Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.
While the assessments from the National Intelligence Council contained information that has been publicized before, they added details in the form of declassified documents from 2003 under the headings of "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq" and "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq."
The documents anticipated that building "an Iraqi democracy would be a long, difficult and probably turbulent process" after the ouster of president Saddam Hussein.
The terrorist network Al Qaeda "probably would try to exploit any post war transition in Iraq by replicating the tactics" it used in Afghanistan to "mount hit-and-run operations against US personnel."
They also projected that any post-Saddam government would face a "deeply divided society with a significant chance of violent conflict among the groups.
Intelligence experts also anticipated that a US-led occupation of Iraq would "boost proponents of political Islam" and invite interference from neighbouring Shia-controlled Iran.
Under Hussein, Iraq's Sunni minority ruled over the majority Shia, but they now have the upper hand in the new elected government.