US: President George Bush has promised to co-operate with incoming Democratic Senate leaders, but tensions between the administration and the newly elected Congress are already emerging.
Mr Bush met Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid and his deputy, Dick Durbin, for 45 minutes at the Oval Office yesterday, a day after the president had lunch with Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi.
"There is a great opportunity for us to show the country that Republicans and Democrats are equally as patriotic and equally as concerned about the future and we can work together," Mr Bush said.
Before the meeting took place, however, Democrats criticised the administration's decision to resubmit John Bolton's nomination as UN ambassador to the outgoing Senate, which remains in place until January.
The Senate failed to confirm Mr Bolton last year and Mr Bush sent him to the UN on a recess appointment, which expires in January.
Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd accused the administration of trying to push the nomination through the Republican-dominated, lame-duck Senate.
Joe Biden, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the nomination was going nowhere. "I see no point in considering Mr Bolton's nomination again," he said.
The administration's hopes of persuading the Senate to confirm Mr Bolton as UN ambassador received another blow when an outgoing Republican senator said he would vote against the nomination, adding that he was thinking of leaving the party.
Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican who voted against the Iraq war and opposed Mr Bolton's nomination last year, was defeated this week by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse.
"I haven't made any decisions. I just haven't even thought about where my place is," Mr Chafee said.
When pressed on whether his comments indicated he might leave the Republicans, he replied: "That's fair."
Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as defence secretary, while almost universally welcomed, has triggered a round of recriminations from Republicans, who complain that the president waited too long to fire him, possibly costing the party control of the Senate in the process.
"If the president had decided to replace Secretary Rumsfeld he should have told us two weeks ago. I think that we would today control the Senate and probably have 10 to 15 more House seats," said former House speaker Newt Gingrich.
Democrats welcomed Mr Rumsfeld's departure but Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha said more action was needed to extricate the US from the quagmire in Iraq.
"All right, you fired the secretary of defence. But that's not a change in policy. What we have to do is give a deadline to the Iraqis."
Mr Murtha, a decorated veteran who is close to military leaders, said Congress should investigate how the Bush administration entered and conducted the war in Iraq.
Tomorrow, Mr Bush will meet members of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan committee chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, which is considering fresh policy options for Iraq.
The group will have a joint conference at the White House with Mr Bush, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley.
The committee, which is due to report next month, will have individual meetings with Mr Rumsfeld, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, national intelligence director John Negroponte, and CIA director Michael Hayden.
Former CIA director Robert Gates, the president's nominee to succeed Mr Rumsfeld, who was a member of the Iraq Study Group, is leaving the committee.
He will be replaced by Lawrence Eagleburger (76), secretary of state in the last two months of President George HW Bush's term.