The US troops in Iraq should be redeployed to Pakistan and Afghanistan to focus on fighting terrorist threats there, a US lawmaker says.

The House Representative from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, said the Congress is challenging President George W. Bush administration's strategy in Iraq 'in favor of a better one that will effectively combat terrorism and create stability in the Middle East'.

"Time and time again, we voted for a strategy to redeploy troops out of Iraq to leave policing the streets to Iraqis and to focus our mission on anti-terrorism, and we won't give up," she said in her weekly Democratic radio address.

"Such a strategy forces the political reconciliation through which stability and rejection of terrorism can flow more effectively. Such an approach would allow for a greater focus on addressing growing terrorist threats in Afghanistan and Pakistan," she added.

The speech was reportedly taped a week earlier, before former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Thursday during a suicide bombing when she was leaving a campaign Rally.

DT/DT