More U.S. Troops May Be Iraq-Bound

According to Khalilzad, Maliki told U.S. officials that Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who leads the most feared militia, had agreed to the creation of a plan for disarming militias.

However, Sadr has said he does not consider his armed followers to be a militia, and thus sees them as outside any plan to break up the militias, according to one diplomat here. It was not clear if Sadr's alleged commitment to Maliki superseded that.

On Tuesday, Sadr called for an end to religious killings.

"I totally reject any Shiite-Shiite fighting or Sunni-Shiite sectarian fighting in Iraq under any pretext," he said in a speech in the southern holy city of Najaf. "Protecting Iraq is our main goal, and the expulsion of the occupation troops from the country is our objective, too."

Armed bands claiming to be part of Sadr's militia have kept up the violence despite similar calls from Sadr in recent months. At least in part, Sadr appears not fully in command of the thousands of armed men claiming allegiance to him.

Iraq's Interior Ministry also is controlled by the Shiite religious parties, and U.S. commanders concede it is heavily infiltrated by the Shiite militias.

Khalilzad said Iraqi leaders have agreed that, over the next 12 months, they will come up with a national compact for reconciliation and a plan that fairly shares Iraq's oil wealth, have a program on militias in place and work on Iraq's security institutions.

Since taking office in May, Maliki has postponed promised action on militias and on national reconciliation, frustrating American officials as the U.S. toll rises and Iraq's divisions deepen. Khalilzad on Tuesday urged Iraqi leaders to "step up" to their responsibilities.

American commanders also have repeatedly set rough dates for when U.S. troops might start to withdraw, only to roll back those dates as Iraq's troubles worsened.

Casey said last year that he hoped for "fairly significant" withdrawals by spring 2006, but he said Tuesday that rising sectarian violence had made such a drawdown impossible.

In Washington, some Democrats responded to Khalilzad's and Casey's messages by demanding that the United States pull out troops if Iraqis miss their deadlines.

"We need to make clear that American troops will be leaving within a year to force Iraqis to make the tough compromises," Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) said in a statement. "Only then do we have a chance to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and bring our troops home."

"We must accelerate the timeline of training Iraqi security forces" and double the number of U.S. trainers, said Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. "American force readiness is at critically low levels and will only fully recover when significant numbers of personnel and equipment can begin to redeploy from Iraq."

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson in Washington contributed to this report.