George Bush today praised Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, as a "strong leader" and said the US would be in Iraq "so long as the government wants us there".

But the pressure on Mr Bush to whittle down America's military presence in Iraq looks set to increase a notch. Next week, the Iraq Study Group led by the former secretary of state James Baker and the former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton is to recommend a gradual withdrawal of US combat troops, reports say.

According to the New York Times, the 10-member bipartisan panel has reached a consensus, after eight months of discussions, that the US should wind down its military commitment and make clear the US troop presence is not open-ended. The US currently has around 140,000 troops in Iraq.

Crucially, the panel avoided a specific timetable for withdrawal - something the Democrats on the panel wanted but the president strongly opposes.

However, the report, to be delivered next Wednesday, is to recommend that a military withdrawal start relatively soon, next year being the implicit message.

A source close to the panel told the Times that Mr Maliki needed to believe Mr Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future or there would be "zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached" in Iraq.

Mr Bush is under no obligation to accept the recommendations of the Baker group, a congressional initiative, and a Pentagon review contains an option for one last big push with a temporary increase of at least 20,000 troops before a drastic scaling down. But with Iraq in civil war, or something very much like it, public support for the American effort is ebbing fast, a point brought forcefully home by the poor Republican showing in this month's midterm elections.

Leaks of the Baker group's recommendations almost overshadowed the delayed talks between Mr Bush and Mr Maliki in Amman, Jordan. After two hours of discussions, the US president said the Iraqi government was part of the "civilised world" that was taking on terrorism.

Mr Bush and Mr Maliki had been due to start meeting yesterday but this was delayed after the publication of a leaked White House memo in which doubts were expressed over Mr Maliki's ability to curb the violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims that is threatening to tear Iraq apart.

The president acknowledged the domestic pressure on him to start withdrawing US troops and said he wanted to begin troop withdrawals "as soon as possible". "But I'm a realist because I understand how tough it is inside of Iraq," he added.

"We'll be in Iraq until the job is complete, at the request of a sovereign government elected by the people," Mr Bush said.

Appearing alongside Mr Maliki at a news conference, Mr Bush said the Iraqi prime minister was a "strong leader who wants a free and democratic Iraq to succeed".

Continuing sectarian violence has led some to call for Iraq to be divided into self-governing Shia, Sunni and Kurd areas, as a way of stopping civil war, but Mr Bush said neither he nor Mr Maliki supported partition.

"Success in Iraq requires a united Iraq ... The prime minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want." He said partition would only lead to an increase in violence and, in the long-term, reconciliation was needed between Iraq's different communities.

Both Mr Bush and Mr Maliki said they had discussed coming up with ways to accelerate the handover of security responsibilities from US forces to Iraqi ones.

The top US military commander in Iraq, George Casey, has said it will take 12-18 months for Iraqi forces to take over.

Mr Maliki left the door open for neighbouring Iran and Syria to help Iraq achieve stability. "We are ready to cooperate with everybody who believes that they need to communicate with the national unity government, especially our neighbours," Mr Maliki said.

The Baker group is to recommend a diplomatic push that will include direct engagement with Iran and Syria. Initially, those contacts might be part of a regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues, such as the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they would ultimately involve direct, high-level talks with Tehran and Damascus.

Mr Bush has repeatedly said, however, that the US would not start talking to Tehran unless Iran stopped its uranium enrichment programme.

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