Bush to address US on Iraq on Sunday

Washington: US President George W Bush will tell Americans on Sunday in an Oval Office address that the US mission in Iraq has entered a critical period in the aftermath of Iraq's election, the White House said on Friday.

The White House scheduled the speech on Sunday and asked the US television networks to carry the speech live.

"The Iraqi people have just concluded a historic election and we are now entering a critical period for our mission in Iraq, and the President will talk about what we have accomplished and where we are headed," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

The address, expected to last less than 20 minutes, follows a series of four speeches that Bush gave in the runup to Iraq's election on Thursday.

He is seeking to bolster American support for the war amid low public approval ratings, a cacophony of criticism over the rising US death toll and demands from some Democrats for a phased redeployment of US troops.

In a telephone conversation with the president on Friday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed his view that the election went well.

"The secretary General was pleased that violence was low, turnout was high and the Iraqi people have crossed another hurdle on their road to democracy," said Frederick Jones, spokesman for the National Security Counsel.

Bush was buoyed by the millions of Iraqis who turned out to vote and he hailed them on Thursday for 'defying the terrorists and refusing to be cowed into not voting'.

In his address, Bush was expected to stress, as he has in recent speeches, that it will take time to form a permanent Iraqi government.

He was also likely to talk about what it will take to pull some US troops out of Iraq beyond those added for extra security for the Iraqi election.

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In the wake of the election, US forces in Iraq are likely to shrink from a current 150,000 to their pre-election total of 138,000 by early February.

"There will be a draw-down from the force level that we are now at, primarily because we kept 30,000 people, more or less there in order to effect the elections, and so we will be drawing down, as planned, as announced prior to the election," Bush said in a PBS Newshour interview on Friday night.

But other reductions are contingent on US commanders deciding that Iraqi forces are trained sufficiently to fight the insurgency on their own.

"As they stand up we stand down, and I think there's a general feeling from our military commanders on the ground and the advisors in the Pentagon, that they're more and more standing up," Bush told PBS.