U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, one of the architects of the Iraq war, said on Saturday the Bush administration did not plan a major review of its strategy in Iraq where sectarian violence is raging, REPORTED REUTERS. Speaking to reporters en route to Moscow, Rice said people should not over-interpret U.S. President George W. Bush's meeting later on Saturday with his military commanders. "I would not read into this somehow that there is a full-scale push for a major reevaluation (of Iraq strategy). The Baghdad security plan was always to be reevaluated at the time of the end of the plan, which was the end of Ramadan," Rice said. Washington has said the results of its 2-month-old campaign to curb violence in Baghdad through mass reinforcements has been disappointing. On Friday, Bush said he would resist U.S. election-year pressure for a major shift in strategy in Iraq, despite growing scepticism among Americans over the handling of the war. The Iraq war, in which about 2,750 American troops and scores of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, has dragged down Bush's popularity before elections in which his Republican Party is fighting to keep control of Congress. Rice, who visited Iraq earlier this month, said there were continual discussions over the U.S. approach to Iraq and what was working or not working. "Given the problems of violence in Iraq and the fact that the violence is not coming down to the degree that people would have hoped, there will be a lot of discussion about how we address that," she said of the meeting later on Saturday. "But the president has regular discussions with his military commanders and I attended one of these Saturday meetings a couple of weeks ago." Rice was Bush's national security advisor during the planning stages of the Iraq war and during the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
