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Baghdad: US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday he backed a brief pause in US troop reductions from Iraq once an initial pullout of five combat brigades has been completed in July.
Troop levels in Iraq are a big US political issue, particularly in a presidential election year.
"I think that the notion of a brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense," Gates told reporters in Baghdad, endorsing publicly for the first time an idea mooted by the US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus.
Asked how long this period of evaluation would last, Gates said: "That's one of the things we are still thinking about."
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