U.S. President George W. Bush, under pressure to change direction in Iraq, said Tuesday he would not be persuaded by any calls to withdraw American troops before the country is stabilized.

U.S. President George Bush toasts with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves before the start of their lunch together in Tallinn, Estonia, on Tuesday.
(Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press)

"There's one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week.

"We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren."

A bipartisan panel on Iraq is finalizing recommendations on Iraq. The group, led by former secretary of state James Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., plan to present ideas to Bush next month.

The commissioners are expected to debate the feasibility of withdrawal timetables.

Recent U.S. elections added fuel to the argument from Democrats that U.S. soldiers need to come home. But Bush has resisted that, even while projecting the need for a different approach.

"We'll continue to be flexible and we'll make the changes necessary to succeed," the president said.

Violence an al-Qaeda plot: Bush

Earlier Tuesday, Bush said an al-Qaeda plot to stoke cycles of sectarian revenge in Iraq is to blame for escalating bloodshed, and refused to debate whether the country has fallen into civil war.

"No question it's tough, no question about it," Bush said at a news conference with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

"There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al-Qaeda causing people to seek reprisal."

Bush, who travels to Jordan later in the week for a summit with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said an uptick in violence does not represent a new era in Iraq. The country is reeling from the deadliest week of sectarian fighting since the war began in March 2003.

"We've been in this phase for a while," Bush said.

The president dated the current spike to the Feb. 22 bombing of a sacred Shia shrine in Samarra, which triggered attacks and reprisal counter-attacks between the Shia majority and Sunni minority, and raised fears of civil war.

Bush said he will ask al-Maliki to explain his plan for quelling the violence.

"The Maliki government is going to have to deal with that violence and we want to help them do so," the president said. "It's in our interest that we succeed."