Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Senator Carl Levin said Democrats will exercise their newly won control of Congress by pushing through a resolution calling for the U.S. to begin withdrawing some of its 140,000 troops from Iraq within six months.

The U.S. needs to ``change the course in Iraq by telling the Iraqis that our presence there is not open-ended,'' Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is in line to become chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on the ABC's ``This Week'' program. ``We need to begin a phased redeployment from Iraq in four to six months.''

Such a resolution won't bind President George W. Bush to start pulling out U.S. forces, and Levin ruled out cutting off funds for the war. White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, while expressing a willingness to ``talk about anything,'' rejected setting a deadline for withdrawal.

``I don't think we will be receptive to the notion that there is a fixed timetable to pull out because that could be disastrous for the Iraqi people,'' Bolten said in a separate interview on the ABC program.

Democrats won majorities in the House and Senate in the Nov. 7 midterm congressional elections in part because of voter dissatisfaction with the war and the administration's efforts to promote stability and self-government in Iraq.

Levin and Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, who is set to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the election results showed the public rejects the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq and wants changes.

Stage Set

While the president sets foreign policy, pressure from the public and some of Bush's fellow Republicans will set the stage for a new course in Iraq, Biden, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, said.

Setting up a timeline for the departure of U.S. troops will put pressure on the Iraqi government to find a political solution to the sectarian violence that has ravaged the country, Biden and Levin said.

``There is no military solution in Iraq,'' Levin said. ``There is only a political solution.''

Democrats aren't unified in their approach on Iraq. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said on the ``Fox News Sunday'' program that setting an ``arbitrary deadline'' for beginning a withdrawal probably won't work.

``The president still is in charge of military and foreign policy,'' Dean said. ``We need to work with the president to get ourselves out of Iraq.''

`Political Games'

Still, he said, the U.S. must increase pressure on Iraq's leaders to take responsibility for their own security.

The Iraqis ``are playing political games over there to see who can get into power on the backs of our troops,'' Dean said, and it shouldn't be America's responsibility ``to prop up an incompetent regime.''

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who also is exploring a presidential bid in 2008, reiterated his call for putting more troops in Iraq.

``There are a lot of things we can do to salvage this but they all require the presence of additional troops,'' McCain said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' ``A withdrawal, or a date for withdrawal, will lead to chaos in the region and most military experts think the same thing.''

Bolten said the president remains committed to stabilizing Iraq and strengthening the country's democratically elected government's ability to battle insurgents and militias.

`Fresh Approach' Needed

``Now, that doesn't mean we're not going to be adjusting tactics,'' he said. ``We clearly need a fresh approach.''

``We're going to be talking even more closely than we have been in the past with the leadership there about the right way forward'' with Democrats in control of Congress, Bolten said.

Bush is scheduled to meet tomorrow with members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which is being led by former Secretary of State James Baker. Baker was a top adviser to Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush, and his panel is set to make its recommendations for U.S. policy in Iraq before the end of the year.

The commission can help ``build some bipartisan and public consensus about the way forward,'' Bolten said.

Bush signaled a change in direction the day after the congressional elections by announcing the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his replacement by former Central Intelligence Agency Director Robert M. Gates, who was a member of the Iraq Study Group. He is stepping down from the panel.

`Year of Transition'

The fighting in Iraq includes conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims as well as attacks on U.S. troops and Iraqi government forces by insurgent and terrorists.

``What's happened is something we all never bargained for, that we seem to just be policing the war between the Shiites and the Sunnis,'' Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program. ``Let's make 2007 a year of transition, where we redeploy a large number of our troops out of harm's way.''

The U.S. military today said three soldiers were killed in an attack yesterday in the al-Anbar Province in western Iraq, one of the areas where sectarian and insurgent violence has surged. In Baghdad, two suicide bombers killed at least 35 people and wounded 60 others today at a base for the Iraqi National Police, Agence France-Presse reported. In southern Iraq, four U.K. servicemen were killed in an attack while they were patrolling the Shatt al-Arab waterway near Basra, AFP said.

More than 2,280 U.S. military personnel had been killed in action since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to the Department of Defense. Iraqi Health Minister Ali al-Shemari said in Vienna Nov. 9 that 150,000 Iraqis have been killed by insurgents since the start of the war.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Tyson in Washington at jtyson@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 12, 2006 14:42 EST