The US House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday night which would allocate US$50 billion for the Iraq war and require President George W. Bush to start troop withdrawal from Iraq in coming weeks with a goal of ending combat by mid December 2008.

However, the legislation that was passed 218-203 by the House was considered as merely a symbolic defy at Bush's war policies, since the White House has pledged to veto the bill, and Republican congressmen vowed to back the president.

"The fact is, we can no longer sustain the military deployment in Iraq," said Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Staying there in the manner that we are there is no longer an option."

However, the White House said in a statement that the votes for the bill, "like the dozens of previous failed votes, put the interests of radical interest groups ahead of the needs of our military and their mission."

The bill only authorized about a quarter of the US$196 billion that Bush has requested for war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan in the fiscal year 2008 starting Oct 1.

But it demanded that the government should begin to order troop withdrawal from Iraq within 30 days and end combat by Dec. 15, 2008.

The money included in the bill should be used to redeploy troops and "not to extent or prolong the war," it added.

Apart from the timetable of troop withdrawal, the bill also called for government-wide standards on interrogation to bar the Central Intelligence Agency from using harsh techniques.

(Xinhua News Agency November 15, 2007)