The number of American troops in Iraq will drop in 2008 and remaining troops will be redeployed out of Baghdad and other areas where they are caught in sectarian violence, Sen. Norm Coleman predicted Thursday.

“We’ll be redeploying forces, we’ll be bringing down American forces next year,” Coleman said in a conference call with Minnesota reporters. “... Write it down now and we’ll see what happens.”

His prediction came two days after the Pentagon announced deployment plans for 35,000 American soldiers that will allow President Bush’s troop-surge strategy to last at least until April.

Coleman’s comments also came a day after 11 moderate Republican members of the House visited the White House and reportedly had a blunt discussion with President Bush about the war in Iraq. The lawmakers, including Minnesota Congressman Jim Ramstad, reportedly told Bush the war was unsustainable given the sparsity of public support and was hurting Republicans politically.

Coleman — a Republican who faces re-election next year when voters will determine control of the House, Senate and White House — said Bush needs to push Iraqi leaders harder to take control of their country. And he said the president needs to agree to unambiguous standards to measure whether the Iraqis are doing what is necessary to bring stability to the war-ravaged country.

“I think we should set clearer benchmarks,” said Coleman, mentioning the holding of local elections in Iraq, the passage of a law fairly dividing oil revenues among Iraqis and getting more Iraqi government resources to the Sunni-dominated portions of the Shiite-majority nation.

Coleman said there will be “certain consequences” to the Iraqis if their actions don’t measure up to the yardstick, but he didn’t specify what they should be.

Congressman Tim Walz, a Mankato Democrat who also spoke to reporters Thursday, supports clear benchmarks for the Iraqis that will result in a withdrawal of American troops if they are not met. And Walz supports setting a specific later deadline for the withdrawal of most American troops even if the benchmarks are met.

But Walz said Bush isn’t willing to discuss a compromise arrangement with the Democratically controlled Congress as lawmakers face the task of passing legislation to continuing funding the war.

“There’s no sense of cooperation in this,” Walz said. “The president said to the speaker (Nancy Pelosi) he’s not going to cut and run. ... This continued blindness to reality is leading us down the wrong path.”

Walz predicts the war will continue until centrist Republicans have had enough.

“It won’t be the Democrats who decide when this is going to end,” Walz said. “It will be the Republican moderates.”