The Herald (UK) is reporting that President Bush and British PM Tony Blair have been accelerating exit plans from Iraq:

The prime minister's spokesman, insisting that Mr Blair was not diverted by speculation over his future but was concentrating on getting the job done, denied the new strategy was a panic measure to silence the anti-war critics on both sides of the Atlantic.

He said: "They have been working on a joint strategy for the last few weeks and it has speeded up in the last few days. It is a recognition that people need to see we have a grip, that we are not there for ever amen, politically or militarily. "Neither is this a case of cutting and running, but showing we have a strategy of achieving what we said we wanted to achieve: the transfer of authority to an Iraqi government and responsibility to an Iraqi security system."