WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- The White House has said that an Iraq pullout plan unveiled last week by a Democratic senator was "remarkably similar" to its own.

    "Today, Senator (Joseph) Biden described a plan remarkably similar to the administration's plan to fight and win the war on terror," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said late Saturday.

    "We can lessen our troop presence in the country without losing our capability to effectively defeat the terrorists," since the Iraqi security forces have gained strength and experience, he added.

    McClellan made the statement in response to a commentary published in The Washington Post by Joseph Biden, who claimed that US forces will begin pulling out of Iraq next year "in large numbers."

    Biden, the top Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in his article that the United States will withdraw about 50,000 servicemen from Iraq by the end of 2006 and "a significant number" of the remaining 100,000 the year after.

    The withdrawal blueprint also calls for leaving only a "small force" either in Iraq or across the border to strike the insurgents, if necessary.

    Though US President George W. Bush has never publicly issued his own withdrawal plan, the White House said many of the ideas expressed by the senator were its own.

    Less than two weeks ago, the White House rebuffed a top Democrat's call for the immediate withdrawal of US troops out of Iraq and said such an act will be equal to surrendering to the terrorists.

    Earlier, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Fox News in an interview that "I do not think that American forces need to be there in the numbers that they are now because - for every much longer - because Iraqis are stepping up." Enditem