(Updates with more details) By Steve Holland WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush was briefed on a bipartisan panel's findings on Iraq on Tuesday but the White House doubted the group's report would provide a "magic bullet" to quickly resolve the Iraq war. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush had lunch with former Secretary of State James Baker, who as co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group has spent six months studying the Iraq war and working out recommendations on what to do. The 10-member group is to make its findings public on Wednesday. Baker, a Republican and longtime Bush family friend, gave Bush "an outline of the general direction of the report," said Perino. The two men talked privately over lunch for about an hour in the private dining room adjoining the Oval Office, Perino said. Shortly beforehand in the Oval Office, Bush and Baker met top members of Bush's national security team. Many in Washington and abroad have anticipated the report as a possible path toward a major change of course in Iraq and a way for the United States to pull out of an unpopular 3 1/2 year war in which 2,905 U.S. troops have died. White House spokesman Tony Snow sought to lessen expectations. "I think anybody who expects ... a magic bullet out of the Hamilton-Baker commission is probably placing an unfair burden on them," he said. Officials familiar with the panel's recommendations have said they include shifting the U.S. military's role in Iraq away from combat over the next year or so. But the group, whose report is being issued amid soaring sectarian violence in Iraq, was not expected to suggest a hard timetable for the proposed U.S. pullback. The panel was also expected to recommend a regional conference that could lead to direct U.S. talks with Iran and Syria, options Bush has opposed. Snow said Bush and White House officials were not "tensing for a punch" from the report. In recent weeks Bush has made clear that his goal remains the same -- that Iraq must be able to sustain and defend itself -- raising questions as to how seriously he will view the panel's recommendations. The White House has insisted Bush is not bound by the report's recommendations and that an internal review of Iraq policy is being conducted simultaneously by the Pentagon and the National Security Council. Bush told the Fox News Channel on Monday he respected Baker and his co-chairman on the panel, former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, but that "it's very hard for me to, you know, prejudice one report over another." "They're all important. I am going to listen to them, listen to what they have to say," he said. Bush meets the Iraq Study Group at 7 a.m./1200 GMT on Wednesday to receive a copy of the report before it is made public. Baker and Hamilton were to appear on Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. (Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria)
