WASHINGTON, April 8: The US general in charge of the Iraq war refused on Tuesday to give a timetable for withdrawing troops from the war-ravaged country, saying it would be a mistake to remove “too many troops too quickly.”Gen David Petraeus told the Senate – and three presidential candidates attending the hearing — that he would continue to withdraw troops until July and then “pause” for 45 days to decide whether it would be safe to continue bringing troops home.

Gen Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, both claimed that an increase in US troops had made Iraq more secure, but conceded that progress was fragile.

A group of female protesters also attended the hearing, wearing traditional Muslim clothing, with ghostly makeup. Some held bloodied dolls, and some had red-stained hands. Their signs read, “Surge of Sorrow” and “Endless War.”

As Senator John McCain, the expected Republican presidential candidate for 2008, opposed a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, a protester stood up with a banner saying, “There’s no military solution.”

At his first appearance before the Armed Services Committee since September, Gen Petraeus said the surge had “achieved progress but that progress is reversible.” He acknowledged that the Iraqi government’s recent offensive in Basra was not sufficiently well-planned.

Democrats pushed the general to give a timetable for withdrawing troops but he said while he would recommend further reductions as conditions permit, his “approach does not allow … a set withdrawal timetable … (but) provides the flexibility … to preserve the still-fragile security gains our troops have fought so hard for and sacrificed so much.”

There are 160,000 US troops in Iraq now and the scheduled withdrawals would leave an estimated 140,000 in July when the pause would begin.

President Bush has said he intends to accept Gen Petraeus’ recommendation and is scheduled to address the issue of troop reductions in a speech on Thursday.

Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Forces, rejected the suggestion that the US troops-surge had made Iraq more secure and blamed the Bush administration for pursuing “a war plan with no exit strategy.”

The troop-surge, he said, was only helping an Iraq government which was “incompetent” and was following “excessive sectarian” policies.

Senator McCain, however, defended the US presence in Iraq, labelling the Democrats’ call for rapid withdrawal as “reckless and irresponsible.”

He said a premature departure of American troops would be “a failure of moral and political leadership.”

Senator Hillary Clinton, who is competing for Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, earned applause from some in the audience when she declared, “I think it’s time to begin an orderly process of withdrawing our troops.”

Mrs Clinton said the large, continued American deployments have meant lost opportunities in Afghanistan, as well as in the broader fight against terrorist networks elsewhere — and has also come at a great “cost to our men and women in uniform.”