By Steve Holland WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush gets an early description of a bipartisan panel's findings on Iraq on Tuesday but the White House said he was not "tensing for a punch" from a report expected to offer options for a change of course. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush was to have 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 public its findings on Wednesday but Snow said Baker, a Republican and long-time Bush family friend, was expected to give a verbal description of the "direction of the report" during the lunch with the president. Officials familiar with the panel's recommendations have said the Iraq Study Group will recommend the U.S. military shift away from combat and toward more of a support role in Iraq over the next year or so. But the group, whose report is being issued amid soaring sectarian violence in Iraq, is not expected to include a hard timetable for the proposed U.S. pullback. The panel is 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 but rather looking forward to studying it. Many in Washington and further afield are hoping the Baker report will offer a major shift in course in Iraq and offer a way for the United States to pull out of an unpopular 3-1/2 year war that has killed 2,905 U.S. troops. But 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 is insisting Bush is not necessarily beholden to the report's recommendations and that in any event, 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 congressman 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 formally receive a copy of the report. Baker and Hamilton then release the report to the public and are to appear on Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Snow said Bush's initial reaction to the report on Wednesday will not be the definitive word because he will need time to study it. (Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria)
