Before the U.S.-led invasion, residents of Baghdad had about 20 hours of electricity a day. Today, they get about 9.4 hours a day, usually broken into two-hour chunks. A year ago, they were getting an average of 10 hours a day. There are also frequent fuel and drinking water shortages, and only 37 percent of the population has a working sewage system.

During his speech, Bush said it was hard to rebuild a country after three decades of tyranny "and rebuilding while a country is at war is even harder." He said the U.S. and Iraqi government were "working to improve basic services like sanitation, electricity and water."

But Othman said Bush's speech "is addressed to the American people, not the Iraqi people. For us nothing is new. But Bush wanted to boost the morale of the American people in these days in which polls show that the majority in America are against Bush's policy in Iraq."

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who met with Bush last week, was quoted as saying in Wednesday's edition of the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat that he discussed the issue of troop withdrawal with the U.S. president.

"We want the foreign troops to leave Iraq as soon as possible," al-Jaafari was quoted as telling the newspaper in an interview. "No country accepts having foreign troops on its lands because this indicates our inability to defend our country and our acknowledgment that there is a security problem."

Bush said that some of Iraq's security forces have made progress, but "the rest are forming and not yet ready to participate fully in security operations. Our task is to make the Iraqi units fully capable and independent."

Former electricity minister Ayham al-Samarie, a dual Iraq-U.S. citizen, announced the creation of the National Council for Unity and Construction of Iraq in a news conference held at a family home in Baghdad.

Al-Samarie said that a group of insurgents he is representing wants U.S. troops to leave Iraq in no less than one year and no more than three years. The insurgents won't put down their arms unless all of their goals are met, he added.

Sunnis, who dominated Iraq for decades, lost power when Saddam Hussein, their last patron and a Sunni, was ousted. Their boycott of January's historic elections further sidelined them, and Sunnis make up the core of a violent insurgency.

A British newspaper this week reported that al-Samarie brokered two recent meetings between U.S. officials and a group of rebels, but al-Samarie would only confirm that the talks took place and declined to give further details. He also said that the group he represents is made up of "resistance" fighters and not "terrorists" who target civilians.