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The US bipartisan Iraq Study Group has reached a consensus on a final report and will call for a gradual withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, shifting the US role from combat to support and advising, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

The group, however, would stop short of setting a firm timetable for the troops' withdrawal, the newspaper said, quoting people familiar with the panel's deliberations.

The report is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by President George W. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended.

The recommendations of the group, to be presented to Bush and Congress next Wednesday, are nonbinding.

The report would recommend that Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.

The bulk of the report focused on a recommendation that the United States devise a far more aggressive diplomatic initiative in the Middle East than Bush has been willing to try so far, including direct engagement with Iran and Syria, according to The New York Times.

Initially, those contacts might be part of a regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues, like the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they would ultimately involve direct, high-level talks with Tehran and Damascus.

Although the diplomatic strategy takes up the majority of the report, it was the military recommendations that prompted the most debate, the newspaper said.

If Bush adopts the recommendations, far more American training teams will be embedded with Iraqi forces, a last-ditch effort to make the Iraqi Army more capable of fighting alone, it said.

The report also would offer military commanders -- and therefore the president -- great flexibility to determine the timing and phasing of the pullback of the combat brigades, the Times reported.

The 10-member Iraq Study Group, which was established in March this year, consists of five Republicans and five Democrats and is led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a Republican, and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton, a Democrat.

(Xinhua News Agency November 29, 2006)