Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Iraq's government must shoulder more of the responsibility for the country's security, a White House adviser said, after U.S. President George W. Bush reviewed military strategy with his top Iraq commanders.

The Bush administration believes it is ``very important that we stay in Iraq and we win in Iraq,'' Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, today told ``The Early Show'' on CBS. The U.S.-led coalition will ``prevail, and it's going to require the Iraqis themselves to step up and take more responsibility.''

Bush is under increasing pressure to find an exit strategy from Iraq, as casualties mount more than three years after the U.S.-led invasion. At least 81 military personnel have been killed in action this month, the highest total since November 2004. Six soldiers and four Marines were killed since Oct. 21, the U.S. Army said in e-mailed statements.

Both Bush and his main coalition partner, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, vow they'll keep forces in Iraq until they're no longer needed. Even so, calls for a change in strategy are increasing.

An independent bipartisan commission established by Congress and headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton plans to make recommendations on U.S. policy in Iraq after the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 7. Baker said this month that he may advise talks with Iran and Syria to stabilize the situation and that the report may not favor ``staying the course.''

Midterm Elections

Opposition to the war may lead to Democratic wins in next month's elections. Optimism about the outlook for the war in Iraq has dropped to just 20 percent, compared with 45 percent in June, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll of 1,006 registered voters. The survey, published Oct. 19, had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Britain's army chief, General Richard Dannatt, said Oct. 13 that U.K. soldiers in Iraq are in danger of exhaustion and that they should be withdrawn in ``a year or two or three.''

``There is no option for the international community to cut and run,'' Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh told reporters after meeting with Blair in London today. ``For some time to come we'll need the support of the international community.''

Any decision to reduce troop levels in Iraq will depend on the Iraqi government, Blair's spokesman Tom Kelly said.

Sectarian Violence Surges

``The people who will ultimately decide are the democratically-elected government of Iraq,'' Kelly said. Blair and Saleh discussed Iraq's economic situation, he added, declining to give more detail.

Iraqi forces are continuing to assume more of the security burden, and will control seven or eight out of 18 provinces by yearend, Saleh said.

Bush met two days ago with his military commanders to discuss strategy, after a security clampdown by U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad was met with a surge in sectarian violence.

Bush acknowledged the same day that the situation in Iraq remains difficult. ``As we engage our enemies in their stronghold, these enemies are putting up a tough fight,'' he said in his weekly radio address.

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent critic of the administration's Iraq policy, said he ``was amazed'' by Bartlett's statements that the U.S. is adapting its Iraq strategy.

``They still talk about this being a war against terrorists,'' Biden said in a separate interview on CBS. ``It's a civil war.''

`Piece of the Oil'

The U.S., Biden said, must demand that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki make the compromises necessary to win a political settlement with warring factions, including giving Sunni Muslims ``a piece of the oil so they will stop their insurgency.''

Attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad rose 22 percent this month, even as extra U.S. troops moved into the Iraqi capital in an effort to restore stability, Major General William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman, said Oct. 19.

Almost 6,600 Iraqi civilians were killed in July and August, the United Nations said in a report last month. As many as 655,000 people may have died in Iraq as a result of the violence and deteriorating conditions that followed the March 2003, U.S.- led invasion, according to a study released Oct. 11 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and al-Mustansiriya University in Bagdad. Bush dismissed the survey as not credible.

Killed in Action

As of Oct. 20, 2,226 members of the U.S. military had been killed in action in Iraq since the invasion, according to figures posted on the Department of Defense Web site. More than 21,000 personnel have been wounded in Iraq through to Oct. 20, with 9,543 of them suffering wounds so serious they haven't returned to duty.

Britain has the second-largest contingent in Iraq behind the U.S., with 7,200 troops currently stationed there. The U.K. has lost 119 soldiers in Iraq.

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Deen in London at markdeen@bloomberg.net; Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo at asheldrick@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: October 23, 2006 11:35 EDT