WASHINGTON, April 6: Speaker and majority leaders of both chambers of the US Congress have sent a letter to President George W. Bush asking him to disengage the United States from Iraq and refocus on Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The letter, also signed by chairpersons of a dozen congressional committees, outlines the policies of the Democratic Party towards the war on terror.

It urges President Bush to acknowledge that his policies have gravely damaged America’s security and offers him a four-part strategy to change course in Iraq:

First, the US must urgently seek political accommodation among Iraqis and transition the US mission in Iraq.

Second, the US must restore the highest state of readiness to its army and marine corps, weakened by repeated and extended deployments in Iraq.

Third, the US must refocus on fighting Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Fourth, the US must also address two key security challenges – the nuclear dispute with Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But the point that is repeatedly emphasised in the letter is the need to seek a political reconciliation in Iraq in order to refocus US resources on fighting Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal zone, which is described by one lawmaker as ‘the most likely real, near-term security threat to the United States’.

The lawmakers remind Mr Bush that to defeat Al Qaeda, the United States will have to ‘dedicate sufficient resources to secure Afghanistan and Pakistan’.

They claim that Al Qaeda’s senior leadership – including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri – has reportedly reconstituted to pre-9/11 strength in safe havens along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The letter also mentions a truce Pakistan signed with the militants in 2006 and President Bush approved after discussing it with President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai at a White House dinner in September that year.

The scourge of terrorism ‘exacerbated when your administration supported a Pakistani peace deal in the tribal areas giving Al Qaeda’s senior leadership time to regroup in this border area’, the letter claims.

The lawmakers urge the Bush administration to ‘refocus US attention on this grave and growing Al Qaeda threat, increasing its military, diplomatic, and economic development efforts in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, instead of tying up the bulk of US resources in Iraqi internal sectarian violence’.

After releasing the letter to the media, senior US lawmakers also addressed a news conference, reminding Mr Bush that the United States needs to fight Al Qaeda along the Pak-Afghan border and not in Iraq.

“Thousands of Americans died as a result of the efforts from Al Qaeda, the terrorists in the Afghanistan and, of course, the Pakistan area,” said Congressman Ike Skelton, chairman, House Armed Services Committee. “It should be our number one priority, and sadly, it’s not.”