Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said they won't support any proposal by President George W. Bush to increase U.S. forces in Iraq, an option he is considering as he works on a new plan to quell sectarian violence there.

``Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain,'' the top two congressional Democratic leaders wrote in a letter to Bush. ``It would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq.''

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said Democrats are considering options to limit the U.S. involvement, including setting a cap on U.S. troop levels and requiring Bush to obtain congressional approval to exceed it.

The letter from Pelosi and Reid comes as Bush prepares to lay out a plan next week for new U.S. steps in Iraq and signals Democrats' efforts to thwart any troop increase or exact a political price if Bush orders one.

``There will be the eyes of the American people on everything the president does in Iraq, for a change,'' Reid told reporters today. ``The people of this country no longer support this war in Iraq.''

Among the options Bush is considering is boosting the number of U.S. forces in Iraq, now at about 140,000. Proposals for an increase range from 8,000 more troops to as many as 30,000. The president hasn't indicated which direction he favors.

``I will want to make sure that the mission is clear and specific and can be accomplished,'' Bush said this week.

Bush Meets With Senators

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush agrees with Pelosi that the U.S. must remain aggressive on the diplomatic front and that Iraq needs a sustainable political settlement and must address sectarian problems.

``The president, for the most part, is listening to people, is listening to ideas,'' he said. ``There will be opportunities for Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid to speak with the president on this.''

Bush discussed the war at the White House today with about a dozen senators from both parties, including Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and Republicans Trent Lott of Mississippi, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Larry Craig of Idaho.

Obama said he wouldn't support a troop increase. ``I said definitively that I thought it was a bad idea,'' he told reporters after the meeting.

`Somber' Meeting

Craig said the mood at the meeting was somber. ``This was not a meeting with lots of smiles,'' he said.

Pelosi, a critic of the war since its inception in March 2003, was elected Speaker of the House yesterday as Democrats took control of the House and Senate. Earlier today, she said that adding more troops would be an escalation of the war that rejects a call from voters in November for a change in direction.

``I don't support it,'' Pelosi, a California Democrat, said in an interview. ``It's an escalation of the war, and the American people spoke very clearly in the election that if there is any place that they want a new direction, it was in Iraq.''

Reid, installed yesterday in the Senate's most powerful post, said Dec. 17 on ABC's ``This Week'' program that he would support a surge of American forces for two or three months as part of a larger plan to withdraw combat troops by 2008.

The letter he and Pelosi sent Bush today said: ``Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror.

Changed His Mind

Reid's action was surprising ``because a week ago Senator Reid was quoted as saying he would support a surge if there was some plan for withdrawal,'' said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, in an interview on ``Political Capital with Al Hunt'' to air this weekend on Bloomberg Television. ``This is sort of a 180 in a very short period of time.''

Reid told reporters he changed his mind after learning that U.S. commanders on the ground didn't think a surge would work.

``Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed,'' Pelosi and Reid wrote Bush.

``After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close,'' they said.

``There is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution,'' they wrote.

Hearings Scheduled

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today released a tentative schedule for four weeks of Iraq hearings beginning with a closed intelligence briefing Jan. 9. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to testify Jan. 11 ahead of a trip to the Middle East.

The committee will ``to seek an answer to the question currently dominating the national debate: what options remain to secure America's interests in Iraq? Where do we go from here?'' said Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat and chairman of the committee.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace will testify before the House Armed Services Committee Jan. 11 and the following day before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the committees said.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said today he wants to learn more about the president's plans, though he is reluctant to second-guess Bush.

``I think that the president is the commander in chief, and while Congress does, in fact, have a role, I don't think that we should be dictating military strategy in Iraq from Capitol Hill,'' Boehner said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 5, 2007 16:57 EST