W.House accuses Democrats over Iraq funding bills

By Paul Eckert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House accused Democrats on Sunday of taking a chance on worsening the hardship facing U.S. troops in Iraq by delaying passage of a bill to fund the unpopular war.

White House counsellor Dan Bartlett criticised Congress for going on recess before finishing the wartime funding bill, which U.S. President George W. Bush has vowed to veto if it sets a timetable for pulling U.S. combat troops out of Iraq.

"By mid-May, troops in Iraq, serving Iraq, would potentially have to have their deployments extended because they're not getting their job done right here," Bartlett told ABC's "This Week" television program.

In Iraq, six U.S. soldiers were killed over the weekend southwest of Baghdad, the military said in a statement, two by an explosion during a patrol on Saturday and four by an improvised bomb on Sunday near a unit responding to the earlier attack.

A British soldier died on Sunday after an attack on a patrol in Basra in the south, and two suicide lorry bombs killed two people and wounded 17 when they exploded at an Iraqi Army base east of the northern city of Mosul, police said.

Funding bills for the war have become a test of Bush's determination to retain control over Iraq policy, which is being challenged by a newly assertive Democratic-controlled Congress confident that voters want U.S. troops to come home.

Democrats have added conditions to the money, including setting timetables for withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq. Bush wants the money without the conditions.

Bartlett cited remarks by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to a House of Representatives panel on Thursday that after April 15, without emergency funding, the Army would have to begin curtailing some troop training.