Chicago Tribune- - WASHINGTON - The Bush administration stands "ready to make course adjustments" with the war in Iraq, the White House said Sunday, while insisting that the president remains committed to his vision of "success" there.

As President Bush prepares to meet Monday with a bipartisan panel commissioned by Congress to examine the situation in Iraq, and as military leaders undertake their own review of admittedly failing policies in Iraq, the administration is voicing a willingness to take a "fresh approach" toward the war.

Yet, after elections that handed the Democratic Party control of Congress and with a growing chorus of leaders in both parties calling for a new course, if not a phased withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, the president insists that he will pursue an unwavering policy of achieving success there - which he defines as an Iraqi government that can "sustain and defend itself."

"We clearly need a fresh approach," Joshua Bolten, the president's chief of staff, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "You know, we're willing to talk about anything."

While expressing a willingness to negotiate with Democratic leaders taking control of Congress in January, the administration also continues to reject any notion of a "fixed timetable" for withdrawal of U.S. forces and has repeatedly dismissed talk of partitioning Iraq into territories along ethnic lines.

"We need to take a fresh look," Bolten said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation." "But what we cannot do is pull out of there prematurely and leave a failed state behind. It's absolutely critical to our national security."

The president plans a White House meeting Monday with the Iraq Study Group, a 10-member bipartisan panel commissioned by Congress and whose chairmen are Republican James Baker, a longtime adviser to the Bush family, and Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic congressman from Indiana who served as vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

The White House does not expect a report from the Baker-Hamilton commission then, but will rather be opening a conversation between panel members and the president and Vice President Dick Cheney that will cap months of interviews the study group has conducted with members of the administration. Members also have traveled to Iraq.

Bolten, interviewed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Sunday, was asked whether the administration stands ready to make course adjustments in Iraq.

"Always been ready to make course adjustments," Bolten said. "You know, nobody can be happy with the situation in Iraq right now. Everybody has been working hard. But what we have been doing has not worked well enough or fast enough."

The commission's members have included Robert Gates, the former CIA director whom the president has nominated to succeed Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. In addition, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has been overseeing an internal review of the situation in Iraq.

Last week's elections are likely to accelerate all the discussions surrounding the Baker-Hamilton commission report and the military review, as the administration accedes to growing public frustration with the war that contributed to the GOP's loss of Congress in the final two years of Bush's presidency.

"We're looking forward to the Baker/Hamilton report," Bolten said on "This Week." "What's changed is we now have Democratic control in the Congress, and we're going to be talking even more closely than we have been in the past with the leadership there about the right way forward."

Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Joseph Biden of Delaware plan to seek a resolution calling for a phased redeployment of U.S. forces to increase pressure on the Iraqi government to achieve the objective the president says he wants: taking control of the nation's internal security with its own forces.

Biden maintained before last week's elections that a Democratic takeover would prompt several Republican leaders to step forward to seek a compromise on Iraq. And he said again Sunday that the elections will spur a new debate, regardless of what the Baker-Hamilton panel recommends.

"I have spoken to major figures in the Republican Party in the area of foreign policy. They are ready to join in some form," Biden said on "This Week." "The Baker commission is out there, as well. That will put pressure. I hope the Baker commission doesn't kick the can down the road and actually makes some strong recommendations, but there's a lot of pieces moving out there."

Levin, interviewed on the same program Sunday, said of the president: "I think that he ought to, with his commission, sign on to a change of course in Iraq and basically sign on to what our uniformed military leaders have told us, which is that there is no military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution in Iraq, and the reason why we have to tell the Iraqis that the open-ended commitment is over and that we're going to begin to have a phased withdrawal in four to six months."

The Bush administration insists that whatever new course is charted, it will have the same goal that Bush has voiced for many months: An Iraqi government ready to "stand up" as the U.S. "stands down."

"The important thing is that this be done in a way that the Iraqis can succeed, that we can have a democratic government there that can govern itself, sustain itself, defend itself and be an ally in the war on terror," Bolten said, reiterating the administration's opposition to hard timetables.

"It's hard for me to see how that can be done on a fixed timetable. It's got to be done based on the conditions on the ground."