"The president's going to make an announcement on Friday -- I believe it's Friday, or very soon," Biden told NBC Wednesday, amid reports that Obama would withdraw US combat forces from Iraq by August 2010, 19 months after his inauguration.

Obama "will speak to it in detail, and I think the American public will understand exactly what we're doing and I think they'll be pleased," Biden said.

"We're keeping a campaign commitment," he added.

During the presidential campaign, Obama, an early opponent of the war, promised to withdraw all US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months.

A defense official had told AFP that the White House was weighing several options for US troop withdrawals from Iraq, with 16-, 19- and 23-month options presented to the president by military advisers.

Although the 19-month option would be a little slower than his campaign pledge, Obama would still put an end to a war nearing its sixth anniversary that has profoundly divided the American public. The war has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and over 4,200 American lives.

With Iraq no longer topping US concerns as it faces its worst recession in decades, 61 percent of Americans last month said they thought the war was not worth its cost, an ABC News-Washington Post poll found.

Polls also show that most Americans back Obama's argument that US troops can best be used to fight the war in Afghanistan, which Obama has called "the central front" in the war on terror.

Obama's defeated challenger in the presidential campaign, Republican Senator John McCain, said Wednesday that the United States should be prepared for more violence in Afghanistan but that the country could be turned around with enough resources and a revamped strategy.

"When you aren't winning in this kind of war, you are losing. And, in Afghanistan today, we are not winning. Let us not shy from the truth, but let us not be paralyzed by it either," McCain said in a speech to a conservative Washington think-tank.

"The scale of resources required to prevail will be enormous and the timetable will be measured in years, not months."

Calling for a "major change in course," McCain warned an audience at the American Enterprise Institute that a serious rethink of strategy and resources in the strife-torn country was necessary to reverse a grim slide into chaos in the war's eighth year.

Although Obama has made clear he inherited a war in Iraq from his predecessor George W. Bush, he must also ensure that a withdrawal does not destabilize the strategically-located and petroleum-producing country, which neighbors Iran.

The 19-month option would be a compromise of sorts between the longer 23-month option advocated by some military commanders on the ground, and the 16-month option that had worried some military officials.

During the campaign, Obama said he would maintain a residual force on the ground to train Iraq forces, fight extremists and protect US assets.

The White House and the Pentagon did not confirm that Obama was set to make the withdrawal announcement soon.

"The president has made no final decisions about Iraq," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

"We obviously have been involved in those discussions, provided any number of thoughts on how one might do that, timelines associated with that, the risks associated with various timelines," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

"But now it's really up to the commander-in-chief at this point in terms of what he decides to do."

In a primetime speech to Congress late Tuesday, Obama said he was "now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars.

"I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war," he said.

The Iraq drawdown is expected to allow more US troops to be deployed to Afghanistan, where Obama has recently authorized an increase of 17,000 troops to add to the 36,000-strong US force there.

Obama has also indicated that a withdrawal from Iraq would help him reach his goal of halving the trillion-dollar-plus US budget deficit by the end of his first term in 2013.

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