The call came days before Bush is scheduled to announce his new strategy for victory in the violence-torn country. The plan will reportedly call for bolstering the US military presence in Baghdad by up to 20,000 troops and pouring into Iraq millions of dollars of new aid to create jobs.

The president was expected to unveil the plan -- which Sunday's New York Times said would be called "A New Way Forward" -- this week, possibly in a nationally-televised speech on Wednesday.

But in a weekly Democratic radio address on Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made clear the congressional majority saw the solution as getting the troops out rather than sending more of them into Iraq.

"In pursuit of results, the new Congress will face many challenges this year, but none more important than working with President Bush to find an end to the intractable war in Iraq," Reid said.

In contrast to Bush, the Senate leader said Iraq was in the middle of a "civil war" and argued against any attempt to resolve the problem by pumping up US troop levels.

"These military professionals tell us there is no purely military solution in Iraq, there is only a political solution in Iraq. They say adding more US combat troops in the middle of this civil war undermines our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility," Reid said.

He said US soldiers and their families had already sacrificed a great deal for Iraq.

"Rather than deploying additional forces to Iraq, we hope the president will make clear to the Iraqi government that the time has come for them to assume more responsibility for their future, and that he will announce he is beginning the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months," Reid said.