Yesterday, the chairman of the congressionally appointed Iraq Study Group — a panel that will likely carry the gravitas of the commission that studied the attacks of September 11, 2001 — said Iraq’s government must show in the next two or three months that it is capable of making progress toward security. The remarks from the close friend of the president’s father, James Baker, were in response to the recent assessment of the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, who said Friday that all options must be on the table if Iraq’s government cannot make progress in the next two to three months.

While neither Messrs. Baker nor Warner is advocating a withdrawal of American soldiers in keeping with the time line favored by a majority of Democrats this election season, the sober view of Iraq and the war is leading many of the president’s closest friends to push for a drastic change in America’s overall war strategy.

Mr. Baker yesterday told ABC’s “This Week” that sometimes “you have to talk to your enemies.” Mr. Baker last month met with senior Syrian and Iranian officials in his capacity as co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group. During his tenure as secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, he worked closely with Syria to enlist the country’s troops for the coalition to oust Saddam Hussein’s armies from Kuwait.

A former Bush national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, has openly advocated in the last two years for direct talks with Iran. The New York Sun reported last month that the options paper submitted to Mr. Baker’s study group from outside experts advocated for either a gradual withdrawal from the country or internationalizing the administration of Iraq and robust diplomacy with Syria and Iran.

This kind of option may be what Mr. Baker was referring to when he told ABC, “I think it’s fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of stay-the-course and cut-and-run.”

At the same time, Mr. Baker appeared to rule out a total withdrawal from Iraq, warning that it would lead to a massive civil war. One idea floated in Washington as an alternative to withdrawal and stay-the-course has been to divide Iraq along rough sectarian lines that would create three states with, respectively, Kurdish, Shiite Arab, and Sunni Arab majorities. The Sunday Times of London yesterday reported that this would be the recommendation of Mr. Baker’s commission.

However, yesterday Mr. Baker indicated his panel would not likely move in that direction. He said it was impracticable. “There’s no way to draw lines between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds in the major cities of Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk,” he said. “Furthermore, there are no boundaries between the Sunni areas and the Shiite areas in Iraq.”

The divide-Iraq approach has already been advocated by a former American ambassador, Peter Galbraith, who was instrumental in ferreting out damning Iraqi documents from the country in the early 1990s proving the regime’s complicity in the gassing of Kurds during the 1988 Anfal campaign. The pressure on the elected government in Iraq is aimed at bolstering Prime Minister Maliki’s plans to begin at least the decommissioning of the factional militias tied to Iraq’s ruling parties.

Iraqi leaders have said they hope to have begun implementing the plan along with other efforts at national reconciliation by mid-December, the same time line when Mr. Baker said yesterday he could see releasing his report. The vice president for foreign policy and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Danielle Pletka, said it was “counter-historical” for people to say a particular time period was more critical than others.

“There is always a temptation by people who leap into the middle and need to produce a recommendation to suggest this must happen or else. … We are in Iraq, it is going to take a lot longer and be a lot harder than we thought,” she said.