HELENA -- Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jon Tester on Wednesday called on President Bush to set a schedule for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq.

"I support our mission in Afghanistan,'' Tester, a Big Sandy farmer and president of the Montana Senate, said in a note to supporters. "I support the War on Terror. And I fully support our troops in Iraq and wherever they serve.''

But Tester said an open-ended occupation is not in the best interest of American troops, the Iraqi people or the Middle East.

"The time has come to support our troops by laying out a plan to bring them home,'' Tester said.

He said Bush was too quick to declare victory in Iraq and was unprepared for the insurgency that followed.

"It is out of loyalty to those troops and those families that I believe the time has come for the administration and the U.S. Congress to articulate a well-defined exit strategy and to set a specific timetable for the departure of American troops from Iraq,''

The sons and daughters of Montana "have borne a disproportionate share of the casualties in this war, and their families have shouldered a great share of its emotional and financial burden,'' he said.

The war's heavy reliance on National Guard and Reserve units have depleted the states' ranks of first responders, he said.

Moreover, Tester said the costs and resources of the war in Iraq have distracted the nation from its missions in Afghanistan and from the larger war on terror.

Finally, Tester said the latest polling in Iraq shows that Iraqis want to step up and take responsibility for their own future.

One of Tester's Democratic opponents, former state Rep. Paul Richards, now of Boulder, welcomed his rival's change of position.

"Standing for peace has been the cornerstone of my campaign since I announced July 12,'' Richards said. "We need to stop the war now.''

Richards, a writer and consultant, said his most popular bumper sticker with voters is the one that reads, "Support Our Troops-Bring Them Home Now.''

He said the tide is turning on the war. When he campaigned last summer, Richards said audiences were split 50-50 over the war. Now about two-thirds of the voters he meets want the United States out of Iraq as soon as possible.

Tester and Richards are two of the Democrats hoping to unseat Republican U.S Sen. Conrad Burns. Other Democrats are state Auditor John Morrison of Helena and Clint Wilkes, an Internet businessman from Bozeman.

Challenging Burns in the Republican primary is Robert Kelleher, a Butte lawyer.