WASHINGTON ( By Jeff Zeleny, NYTimes) February 8, 2007 — As the House prepares for three days of debate next week on Iraq, Democratic leaders sought Wednesday to reconcile deep differences within the party in order to shape a symbolic resolution denouncing President Bush’s troop buildup plan.

Seventy-one Democratic representatives signed a statement urging Congress to take a stronger stance against the war, including setting a six-month timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq.

Democratic leaders have said that they favor a nonbinding resolution simply requiring lawmakers to support or reject the president’s policy.

Representative Dennis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, expressed the view of those pushing for a weightier resolution, saying, “The nonbinding resolution is like putting your foot on the brake for a moment and a few weeks later, putting your foot on the accelerator.” He added: “Congress has a chance to do something real on the war. A nonbinding resolution just doesn’t cut it.”

In the Senate, an impasse over the Iraq debate intensified as Democrats and Republicans spent the day heaping blame upon one another for failing to agree on how to proceed with an Iraq resolution of their own. But on Wednesday evening, seven Republican senators sent a sharply worded letter to their leaders pressing to resolve the delay, saying: “The current stalemate is unacceptable to us and to the people of this country.”

Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who led the bipartisan resolution against the president’s troop buildup plan, went to the Senate floor on Wednesday to read the letter only two days after siding with Republican leaders on a vote that blocked the debate. He declined to specify what he and the other Republicans intended to do but suggested they would make procedural trouble until the bipartisan Iraq resolution received a full hearing.

Mr. Warner was among the handful of Republican senators who have come under intense criticism for playing a role in this week’s standoff, even though he wrote the resolution to rebuke the White House over its plan to send more troops to Baghdad.

Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who has been the loudest Republican critic of the president’s Iraq policy, also signed the letter after his vote contributed to a delay of the Iraq debate. “People of this country look at us and shake their heads in disgust,” he said in an interview Wednesday evening. “The message we’re sending to the American people is that we don’t have time, we’re not mature enough to find a way to deal with the most important issue of our time.”

The other Republican senators signing the letter were: Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine; Gordon Smith of Oregon; Norm Coleman of Minnesota; and George V. Voinovich of Ohio.

Of that seven, only Ms. Collins and Mr. Coleman broke ranks with Republican leaders and joined Democrats in voting for the debate over the Iraq resolution to proceed.

Senate Democrats, whose plan to debate the Iraq resolution this week was stymied by the Republican minority, said they planned to move on and express their opposition to the president’s troop buildup in other pieces of pending legislation.

A spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, dismissed the message of the letter and said Mr. Warner and the other Republican senators had missed their chance for a full debate on their resolutions.

“Hopefully this letter signifies that the others have had a change of heart and will be willing to vote for their own resolution in the future,” said the spokesman, Jim Manley.

Frustrated by the impasse in the Senate, the House is gearing up for a full-fledged debate beginning Tuesday, leading up to the first Iraq-related vote since Democrats won control of Congress in November. Each representative will be allowed five minutes to speak before voting on a resolution devised to send a bipartisan message to the White House opposing the plan to expand the military operation in Iraq.

It remained an open question, though, if House Democratic leaders could keep the debate from fracturing along ideological lines within the party. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat of California, has been meeting one on one with lawmakers in her party, urging them to support the bipartisan resolution as a first step.

House Democrats will meet behind closed doors Thursday in an attempt to agree on language of the Iraq resolution to be debated next week. While many Democrats want to push legislation aimed at blocking financing for the war, a plan that has emerged among the leadership is simply to have representatives cast a vote to support or reject the president’s plan.

“If you want to vote for the escalation, you can vote yes,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus. “If you want to vote against the escalation, you can vote no.”