By Andrew Gray WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday the United States could consider reducing troop levels in Iraq later this year, contradicting comments by a senior military commander. Gates said a progress report in September from Gen. David Petraeus, the overall commander in Iraq, and the U.S. ambassador there would determine the future of the higher troop levels ordered by President George W. Bush in January. "The outcome of that evaluation is not foreordained," Gates told the defense subcommittee of the Senate's Appropriations Committee. "I think if we see some very positive progress and it looks like things are headed in the right direction, then that's the point at which I think we can begin to consider reducing some of these forces," Gates said. Gates said the question for the September review would not be whether violence had stopped completely but whether it had declined enough for Iraqis to move ahead with reconciliation. "The question is whether the level of violence is such that the political process can go forward in Iraq. And that then sets the stage for us to begin drawing down our troops," he said. Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander for day-to-day operations in Iraq, was quoted as telling The Washington Post that the increase in U.S. troops to a force of around 160,000 "needs to go through the beginning of next year for sure." "What I am trying to do is to get until April so we can decide whether to keep it going or not," Odierno was also quoted on Wednesday as saying in an interview. Pressed at the hearing on how Odierno's comments could square with his own, Gates replied: "I think the candid answer is they don't." The buildup is highly controversial politically. As the 28,000 extra troops flow into Iraq, Democrats in the U.S. Congress are trying to pressure the administration to begin withdrawing U.S. forces from the country this year. Under Bush's plan, troops are moving away from large bases and deploying into Baghdad neighborhoods in an effort to clamp down on sectarian violence, which U.S. officials say should allow Iraqi politicians to pass reconciliation measures. Many military strategists have said September is too soon to reach a judgment on the effectiveness of the troop increase. "If we want results by September, we might as well pull out right now," said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, who recently visited Iraq to view U.S. military operations at the invitation of Petraeus. "It's not going to happen by September; I mean that's insane," Boot said on Tuesday. "We may start to see some results by January." Gates, however, said the review would be looking at broad trends as well as concrete results. "I think we're going to be looking for the direction of events," he said. "We don't have to have it all locked in place and everything already completed." (Editing by Cynthia Osterman; Reuters Messaging: andrew.gray.reuters.com@reuters.net))
