US President George Bush said Saturday that saying new offensive operations in Iraq were were just in their "early stages", signaling his unwillingness to consider early US troop reductions in the country, international media reported.

The statement, made in his weekly radio address, followed a fervent plea by John Warner, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who publicly asked the president to initiate by September 15 at least a symbolic drawdown of US military forces from Iraq.

Warner, a former secretary of the Navy and a widely respected authority on military affairs, suggested Thursday the president bring home up to 5,000 US troops as "the first step in a withdrawal of armed forces" in order to "send a sharp and clear message" to the Iraqi government that the US commitment was not open-ended.

Bush has not formally responded to the appeal. But in his address, he expressed satisfaction with offensive operations launched in the wake of a nearly 30,000-troop surge he announced at the beginning of the year -- and said they were just beginning.

"We are still in the early stages of our new operations," the president said. "But the success of the past couple of months have shown that conditions on the ground can change -- and they are changing."

He argued that every month since January, US forces have killed or captured on average more than 1,500 Al-Qaeda fighters and other insurgents in Iraq.

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