By Edward Epstein

Overcoming their initial doubts, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada now say they will go to the White House Wednesday to talk with President Bush about funding the Iraq war, in a session in which the two sides could end up talking past each other.

It's unclear whether the planned meeting will get the angrily divided sides to negotiate ways to bridge the gap between the Democrats' insistence on winding down U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Bush's desire to give his war strategy more time. But each side feels it still has room to turn up the pressure on the other before something gives.

Democrats in both houses have passed emergency war-spending measures of more than $120 billion that call for U.S. troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq and pay for the war through the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.

The president, who has lambasted the Democratic position, earlier this week proposed top congressional leaders of both parties attend a White House session to hear why they needed to give him a spending bill free of withdrawal requirements.

Top Democrats demurred, saying it was clear the president wouldn't negotiate, but merely wanted them to agree to appropriate another $100 billion or so for the war.

But that changed Wednesday evening, after Reid and other Senate Democratic leaders had written Bush inviting the president to the Capitol to meet today with senators from both parties.

"We will be at the White House on Wednesday to talk with the president,'' Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and Reid said in a joint statement. "We will listen to his position, but in return we will insist that he listen to concerns of the American people that his policies in Iraq have failed and we need to change course.''

The meeting, which is expected to include top congressional Republicans, comes as the administration has warned that without the additional money for the war, the Defense Department will be forced to start cutting military training and equipment purchases and extending the deployment of units already in Iraq.

Democrats cite a report from the Congressional Research Service saying that there is enough money in the pipeline to carry Iraq operations into July, giving them and Bush plenty of time to work out a deal.

In his Tuesday speech warning that the Democrats could be responsible for longer troop deployments in Iraq, Bush didn't mention that the next day Defense Secretary Robert Gates would announce that the tours of troops already in Iraq would be extended to 15 months from the current 12 months.

The extended stays in Iraq are required because of long-term manpower shortages in an Army stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not because of the Democrats' alleged slowness in approving the $100 billion.

"I'm not aware that the president knew that Secretary Gates had come to any decision,'' White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Thursday.

Perino said she wouldn't get into a discussion about whether the Democrats or Bush had blinked to overcome their two-day standoff on next week's meeting.

"We hope we can find a way forward so the president can get a clean funding bill,'' she said, referring to legislation that would appropriate money without any requirements for withdrawals.

The Senate returned to Washington this week after one week off, and the House will return next week after two weeks at home. Negotiators from the two houses must reconcile the different versions of the spending bills and send final legislation to Bush. He says he will veto anything but a "clean" bill.

The Democrats' attitude could be affected by what members are hearing from their constituents back home.

In a memo to his fellow Democratic members, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., said they should keep pressuring Bush.

If Bush persists in not negotiating with Congress, his "continued insistence on a blank check for the war will only further damage his standing with the American people," wrote Emanuel in the memo obtained Thursday by the Associated Press.

Still, he wrote, Democrats should seek a deal with Bush on the "areas of agreement that should offer fertile ground for negotiation and compromise."

Michelle Flournoy, a military analyst who is president of the Center for a New American Security in Washington, said the new Democratic majority in Congress reflects a war-weary public. "The people have become deeply disillusioned and don't believe the administration has a plan for success,'' and the Congress' desire to pull out reflects that.

Also, she said, "the ground has shifted under our feet in Iraq over the last year. Iraq is in a civil war, period, and we need a different strategy.''

Retired Army Gen. John Batiste, a former commander in Iraq who has become a leading Bush critic, said, "Congress reflects the will of the American people, and thank God they are gripping the constitutional responsibility that Congress for the previous six years had abrogated.''

But polls show there are two Americas when it comes to the war and the relative strength of Bush and Congress on the issue. Polls show that about 80 percent of Democrats support a withdrawal next year -- as do a majority of independent voters -- while only about one-third of Republicans support such a strategy switch.

While the numbers give hope to Democrats that they'll prevail and force the withdrawal of the troops, it's also why the Republican president believes he can count on virtually unified Republican support in Congress if he vetoes a spending bill with withdrawal provisions.