WASHINGTON - The commander of coalition forces in northern Iraq said Friday that four Iraqi army divisions in his area will be put under Baghdad's control by next March. It's just the kind of transfer that a US study commission reportedly is ready to embrace. "I can certainly see great opportunity to reduce the amount of combat forces on the ground" in the north "and turn more responsibility over to Iraqi security forces," Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon told Pentagon reporters in a videoconference from his headquarters near Tikrit.

US troops inspect the site following an explosion in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, Friday, Dec. 1, 2006. A suicide bomber targeting an American convoy killed two civilians and wounded three, police said. [AP]

He said that even after this transition is complete, US troops likely would continue to support Iraqi forces and conduct combat operations against al-Qaida "operatives."

Some US commanders in Iraq already are shifting some troops from combat to support roles, while giving the Iraqi Ministry of Defense more control over Iraq troops.

Mixon's comments came a day after President Bush returned from a meeting in Jordan with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at which the Iraqi said his country's forces will be able to take control over security by next June. Bush said there was "no realism" to the notion of a "graceful exit" by U.S. forces.

Bush repeatedly has rejected a wholesale troop withdrawal or what he calls artificial deadlines.

A report due Wednesday from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group will suggest gradually phasing the mission of US troops in Iraq from combat to training and supporting Iraqi units.

"This has really got to become more and more of an Iraqi problem, and less and less of a U.S. one," National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said in remarks that will air Sunday on "Q&A" on C-SPAN. "I would hope that our forces can take more of a support role and a training role, and fall more into the background rather than being in the lead in the months ahead."

The study team headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., also recommends a gradual reduction of US forces and a more aggressive regional diplomacy. However, it sets no timetable, according to officials familiar with the group's deliberations. The report could give Bush political cover to shift tactics in the increasingly unpopular war.

A senior U.S. official said Friday the administration has debated whether to abandon US efforts to bring Sunni insurgents into the political process to stabilize Iraq, and instead leave that outreach to the majority Shiites and Iraq's third major group, the Kurds.

As part of an ongoing internal administration review of Iraq policy, U.S. officials have argued that the outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed and may be alienating Shiites, who dominate the government.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the debate, said senior State Department officials have countered that ending U.S. attempts to increase the Sunni stake in government would leave the root causes of the insurgency unaddressed. Opponents of the strategy say it could also appear the U.S. is taking sides in Iraq's sectarian divide and could alienate close U.S. allies in the region.

The debate was first reported by The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, senior administration officials said Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet Monday in Washington with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most powerful Shiite politicians, in a bid to find a new approach. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the White House schedule has not been released.

One official said the president will meet in January here with a Sunni leader - Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi.

Al-Hakim, whose party is a senior member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition, caused an uproar this week in Iraq when Arab news channels quoted him as saying that Iraq's Sunni-Arab minority would be the biggest losers if civil war broke out in Iraq. Al-Hakim quickly denied that he had made such a comment.

Expanding on previous reports that the Baker-Hamilton commission would urge troop withdrawals beginning early next year, a US official said Friday the report also recommends a "conditions-based" goal of completing combat troop withdrawals by early 2008. That is short of a firm timetable, and would leave in place troops needed to train and support the Iraqis.

"The essence of it is that you want to transition from one kind of posture to another," from combat to support, the official said.

A former senior US official who advised the commission said he understood the goal was to reduce the number of US troops in Iraq to tens of thousands of advisers and support units, but with leeway to supplement them with additional combat troops, based most likely in Kuwait and elsewhere in the area.

About 140,000 American troops are in Iraq.

The report will also urge Bush to engage US adversaries Syria and Iran to improve regional dialogue, several officials said.