US President George W Bush was due to meet the future Senate majority leader yesterday after the Republican rout in Congressional elections, but the new spirit of compromise was already being tested over the war in Iraq.

A day after lunching with top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi, Bush was scheduled to meet Friday with her Senate counterpart Harry Reid in hopes of fashioning the basis for bipartisanship for his last two years in the White House.

But discord was already in the air as Democrats, coming off of their victory over the Republicans in Tuesday's midterm elections, made clear they wanted changes in key policy areas, especially in the US troop presence in Iraq.

The White House, meanwhile, pushed back with its own unbudging agenda, including asking the lameduck Senate to extend the job of controversial US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

Bush vowed to work with triumphant Democrats in a show of postelection bipartisanship just after his meeting with Pelosi, the 66-year-old Democrat set to become the first woman speaker of the House of Representatives in early January.

"The elections are now behind us, and the congresswoman's party won, but the challenges still remain," said Bush.

"We're going to work together to address those challenges in a constructive way. We won't agree on every issue. But we do agree that we love America equally, that we're concerned about the future of this country."

But in a sign the new spirit of cooperation may be only skin deep, senior Democratic Representative John Murtha said the resignation of Bush's stalwart Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday was not enough to ameliorate party differences over the warin Iraq.

"All right, you fired the secretary of defence. But that's not a change in policy," Murtha, who will vie with minority whip Steny Hoyer to be the House majority leader in January, said on CNN television.

"What we have to do is give a deadline to the Iraqis," Murtha said, adding that he favoured opening an investigation into how Bush's White House entered and managed the war in Iraq.

And Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan warned that Democrats are bound by voters to pursue reforms affecting jobs, wages, health care, and energy policy.