WASHINGTON - An influential bipartisan panel is expected to recommend on Wednesday that US forces withdraw from combat over the next year and focus on training Iraqis, offering President George W. Bush the outlines of an exit strategy from the unpopular war.

Former US secretary of state James Baker (L) and his Iraq Study Group co-chair Lee Hamilton. The Iraq Study Group is to release an eagerly awaited plan for a change of course in Iraq, as US leaders grope for a way out of the country's bloody slide into chaos US President George W. Bush got a preview of a high-powered commission's report on overhauling his Iraq strategy, as the White House encouraged Baghdad to talk security with Iran and Syria. [AFP]

The Republican president has not said if he will take the advice of the Iraq Study Group, which CNN reported also calls for a comprehensive Middle East peace plan in a broader regional approach to stabilizing Iraq.

Quoting excerpts of the report, which is to be released at 11 a.m. (1600 GMT), CNN said it stopped short of recommending a specific timetable for withdrawal but did stress that Iraqis had to take on a larger share of the military role.

"The primary mission of U.S. forces should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army," CNN quoted the report as saying.

In other details to emerge, The Washington Post said the panel recommends that Bush press the Iraqi government to meet specific goals for improving security or face the threat of a cut in U.S. economic and military support.

More than three-and-a-half years after the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, about 140,000 American troops remain in Iraq fighting an insurgency and trying to stop savage sectarian strife between Shi'ites and Sunnis.

The conflict has lasted longer than US involvement in World War Two and has killed more than 2,900 American troops.

Ethnic fighting has killed thousands of Iraqis, raising debate over whether the country has descended into civil war and whether the US-backed government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki can stem the carnage.

Bush is under added political pressure to change course in Iraq since the November 7 elections when voters, who had soured on the war, ended Republican control of Congress.

The president, who was briefed on the report on Tuesday, has said he will listen to the group's ideas but the White House said it doubted the panel's five Republicans and five Democrats would provide a "magic bullet."

Robert Gates, a former CIA director and commission member until Bush nominated him last month to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, said the United States was not winning in Iraq and dismissed the prospect of quick solutions.

'NO NEW IDEAS'

"It's my impression that, frankly, there are no new ideas on Iraq," Gates told his Senate confirmation hearing.

Still, the group led by Republican former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana is expected to influence the debate over the war because its members were unanimous in their advice.

Sources familiar with the group's deliberations said the report would recommend the U.S. military shift away from combat and toward a support role in Iraq over the next year or so.

It is also expected to call for a regional conference on stabilizing Iraq that could lead to direct U.S. talks with Iran and Syria, an option that the White House has opposed.

Pulling back combat forces to focus on providing training, advice, logistics and intelligence would still leave tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Bush has given little sign he will contemplate any quick exit from Iraq, saying repeatedly that U.S. forces would stay until the job is done.

"It's in our interests to help liberty prevail in the Middle East, starting with Iraq. And that's why this business about graceful exit simply has no realism to it at all," Bush said after he met Maliki in Jordan last week. "We'll be in Iraq until the job is complete."

The White House has sought to blunt the impact of the Iraq Study Group's work by conducting its own review of the war. Bush aides have said he is likely to take weeks, rather than months, to decide how and whether to change his policy.