White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Iraq Study Group is not due to present the president with its final report this week. "That is yet to come, on a schedule to be determined by the study group itself," he added.
The British newspaper The Observer reported on Sunday that Prime Minister Tony Blair told Bush in a long telephone call about the need to involve Iraq's neighbours Syria and Iran in efforts to stabilise the country which is gripped by spiralling sectarian violence.
On Saturday, Bush signalled that he was open to a new path in the violence-racked country, praising his choice for defence secretary as "an agent of change."
In his weekly radio address, Bush reaffirmed his determination to fight terrorism and said that Iraq remained "the central front in this war on terror."
But he made it clear, less than a week after the stunning Democratic victory in Tuesday's congressional elections, that he was open to ideas presented by Democrats as well the Iraq Study Group.
On Sunday, Democratic lawmakers said they hoped to begin a phased withdrawal of US troops within four to six months as Washington pressures Iraqis to reach a political solution to the violence there.
US Senator Carl Levin, presumed to become the chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee in January, said that Americans supported the short time frame for withdrawal.
"The people spoke dramatically, overwhelmingly, resoundingly to change the course in Iraq," Levin told ABC news, saying that the US military commitment there is "not open-ended."
"As a matter of fact, we need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months," Levin said.
Senator Joe Biden, set to return to his role as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the United States should call on the Iraqi government to resolve sectarian divisions through political compromise.
He said lawmakers would "put pressure on the Iraqis to insist upon a means to distribute the oil equitably, make sure there's some form of federalism and deal with the militias and call for an international conference."
Asked if he would include Iran and Syria in pursuit of international support for a peaceful Iraq, Biden said, "in my case, yes," adding Turkey as well.
Levin and Biden were expected to take leadership roles in the Senate in January after Democrats took control of the US Senate in last week's legislative elections that were widely considered a referendum condemning Bush's policy in Iraq.
Bush will speak to members of the Iraq Study Group on the same day he meets at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has warned the United States against a "premature pullout" from Iraq.
The Iraq Study Group is headed by Republican former secretary of state James Baker and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton and includes former US Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Robert Gates, the former CIA chief nominated to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defence.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2006