Iraq tribal leader who fought al Qaeda killed

By Ahmed Rasheed and Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A Sunni Arab tribal leader instrumental in driving al Qaeda out of Iraq's Anbar province was killed by a bomb on Thursday, hours before U.S. President George W. Bush prepared to endorse limited U.S. troop cuts in Iraq.

Abdul Sattar Abu Risha died in an attack on his car near his home in Ramadi, capital of Anbar. He led an alliance of Sunni Arab tribes called the Anbar Salvation Council that joined forces with U.S. troops to push al Qaeda from much of the western area.

Abu Risha was killed less than two weeks after he and other tribal leaders met Bush during a highly symbolic trip to Anbar on September 3, where Bush declared that improved security in the desert province was an example of what could happen elsewhere in Iraq.

The Bush administration has touted security improvements in Anbar as one of the biggest recent success stories in Iraq.

Iraq's government and the White House condemned the attack on Abu Risha. Iraqi officials blamed Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

The U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, called the killing of Abu Risha "a terrible loss for Anbar province and all of Iraq."

"It shows how significant his importance was and it shows al Qaeda in Iraq remains a very dangerous and barbaric enemy," Petraeus said in an interview with The Washington Post published on its Web site.

Bush, seeking to rally support amid growing Democratic opposition to his Iraq strategy, will use a televised address on Thursday night to embrace a proposal by Petraeus to gradually remove five of 20 military brigades now in the country.

Administration officials would not specify how many troops that would involve, but an Army brigade is typically made up of roughly 4,000 soldiers plus an unknown number of support troops, making for a total withdrawal of more than 20,000.

"Because of the measure of success we are seeing in Iraq, we can begin seeing troops come home," Bush planned to tell Americans after Petraeus delivered two days of congressional testimony that highlighted deep partisan divisions over the war, with some Democrats demanding radical troop cuts now.

Excerpts of Bush's speech were released in advance.

A senior administration official said on Thursday Bush intended to withdraw 5,700 troops from Iraq by December.

The partial drawdown approved by Bush would effectively reduce troop levels from the current 169,000 to about the same force the United States had in Iraq before the president ordered a buildup in January.

The proposed reduction would not be as fast or as large as Democrats in the U.S. Congress have demanded, but could buy time for the president to pursue the war by undermining a push for a wider withdrawal.

Bush was to make clear the size of the troop cuts would depend on continued progress in Iraq and note that the Iraqi government "has not met its own legislative benchmarks.