CNN: Rice to testify on Iraq before Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday

Friday, January 05, 2007
Rice to testify on Iraq before Senate committee Thursday

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will go to Capitol Hill next Thursday to discuss the Bush administration's new strategy for Iraq with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The committee's new Democratic chairman, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, and ranking Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, announced a tentative schedule Friday for four weeks of hearings on Iraq, including the appearance by Rice.

In a statement announcing the hearings, Biden, an outspoken critic of the administration's Iraq policy, said their purpose is "not to revisit the past, but to help build a consensus behind a new course."

"The purpose of these hearings will be to seek an answer to the question currently dominating the national debate -- what options remain to secure America's interests in Iraq? Where do we go from here?" Biden said.

President Bush said Thursday that he will unveil his new strategy for Iraq sometime next week. While the president offered no details, sources with knowledge of the Bush's deliberations have told CNN that he is likely to order a "surge" of 20,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops to Iraq to bolster the roughly 140,000 now there.

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