President Bush’s rejection yesterday of timetables for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and offer of an olive branch to insurgent leaders could open the door for greater Sunni Arab participation in December 15 elections for Iraq’s National Assembly.

A 38-page “Iraq national strategy,” declassified and released yesterday, states that America’s commanders and diplomats in Iraq will “engage those outside the political process and invite in those willing to turn away from violence through ever-expanding avenues of participation.”

Sunni Arab organizations such as the Sunni Muslim Scholars Association participated in negotiations regarding Iraq’s constitution, which leaders have promised to amend, and on Tuesday met with American military commanders in Fallujah, Iraq, to discuss a ceasefire in the insurgency.

The endorsement from Mr. Bush, however, could go even further toward securing their participation in the December 15 elections.

Delivered against the backdrop of sinking public approval for the war policy and blistering criticism from Democratic lawmakers, the president’s speech failed to gain much approval from his political opposition.

Mr. Bush yesterday took on his critics, who have complained that he has been inflexible and has pursued a losing strategy. “If by ‘stay the course’ they mean we will not allow the terrorists to break our will, they’re right,” he told a cheering audience at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. “If by ‘stay the course’ they mean that we’re not learning from our experiences or adjusting our tactics to meet the challenges on the ground, then they’re flat wrong.”

In that spirit, Mr. Bush yesterday admitted mistakes in the training of Iraqi soldiers. “When our coalition first arrived, Iraqi police recruits spent too much time of their training in classroom lectures and they received limited training in the use of small arms,” he said. “This did not adequately prepare them for the fight they would face.” The strategy document released yesterday also concedes that some terrorists have been able to infiltrate the security services.

That strategy document categorizes the insurgency in three groups. The first and largest are comprised of what it calls “rejectionists.” It says, “We judge that over time many in this group will increasingly support a democratic Iraq provided that the federal government protects minority rights and the legitimate interests of all communities.” Wooing this group into the fold is the mission of America’s ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, who announced Tuesday that he will start new talks with Sunni Arab leaders to persuade them to participate in elections.

The other two categories, according to the strategy, are regime loyalists and “terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaeda.” For the former, the strategy says that they can be defeated by new Iraqi security services. For the latter, the strategy suggests that American-led counterterrorism campaigns will be needed to defeat them.

The president defied some expectations in the press that he would announce a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. He pointed out that he had raised the force level in the country to 160,000 soldiers from 137,000 in anticipation of the December elections. “These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington,” he said.

The speech yesterday did not address criticisms that the while the Iraqi security services may be increasing in number, many of the members are from militias loyal to factions in the country. Nor did he respond to growing concerns about human rights violations in Iraq.

Over the weekend, a former Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, a White House ally, compared the current practices of Iraq’s security services to those under Saddam Hussein. American soldiers recently raided a secret prison operated by Iraq’s interior ministry. Reports are now surfacing that Shiite Arab security officers are arresting and murdering Sunni Arabs at random in and around Baghdad and Basra.

The top story on the speech by the Sunni Arab Iraqi cable channel Al Sharqia criticized the president. “Bush did not announce anything new in his speech, and completely ignored the rising controversy over whether he deliberately misled the public opinion to believe that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had connections with Al Qaeda,” it said. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera yesterday reported that security officials are expecting an increase in terror attacks before the December 15 elections.

Senator Clinton recently wrote in a letter to supporters, “Given years of assurances that the war was nearly over and that the insurgents were in their ‘last throes,’ this administration was either not being honest with the American people or did not know what was going on in Iraq.”

Senator Biden, a Democrat of Delaware praised last week by the White House as forwarding a strategy similar to its own, said, “The President rightly says our goal is to train Iraqi security forces to the point where they can act on their own or lead operations and he tells us how many are there now – but he doesn’t give us any idea when more Iraqis will get to that point and what we’re doing to train them more quickly and effectively.”

The Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said, “After nearly 1,000 days of war in Iraq, our troops, their families, and the American people deserve more than just a Bush-Cheney public relations campaign.”