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BAGHDAD - As "sovereignty" was assumed by a UN-recognised interim Iraqi government this week, two new developments indicate that the US military presence in this country could last for many years. But there remains an American warning, made by top Washington officials in recent months, that the US could withdraw in a hurry, leaving Iraq in a long cycle of civil wars that might threaten the stability of most neighbouring countries.

President George W. Bush has said repeatedly that US forces will remain in Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day longer. US presidents said about the same thing after American forces invaded Germany and Japan in World War II and the Korean peninsula shortly thereafter.

The US has about 138,000 soldiers and marines in Iraq. Compared with the armaments and combat capabilities of American forces in the 1940s and 1950s, this must be equivalent to about 700,000 US soldiers and marines.

The big question, however, is whether Iraq is governable now that Pandora's box of ethnic and religious conflicts has been opened - accompanied by a roiling Wahhabi-Baathist insurgency confronting the world's strongest military force. But most Iraqis profess less concern about whether this country is governable than about the need for independent Iraqis, not outsiders or US puppets, to do the job. Responding to tough talk against by new Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi on June 23 promised he will be killed just as former IGC President Ezzeddin Salim was slain in May. A Jordanian-born Wahhabi associate of Osama Bin Laden, Zarqawi is based somewhere in Iraq's Sunni Triangle.

The insurgents on June 24 killed about 100 people in co-ordinated attacks in five cities. However, in a significant boost for the interim government, the militia loyal to Shiite rebel mullah Muqtada Al-Sadr ordered its forces to observe a truce in their Baghdad redoubt, Sadr City, and offered to join the new government in its battle against Sunni insurgents. A statement issued by the Baghdad committee of Jaysh Al Mahdi (Mahdi Army) said: "We are ready to co-operate positively with the police forces and the regime to defend the electricity stations, (oil) pipeline and anyone who could be a target of terrorism especially over the next two weeks". The move could pave the way for Sadr to rejoin the Shiite fold in supporting the US-backed political process.

Allawi's government is guiding Iraq through a crucial period, including elections scheduled for Jan. 31, 2005. A former Baathist, Allawi is familiar with the ins and outs of Iraqi society. But Wamid Nadhmi, a prominent Iraqi political scientist, says: "When I think about it objectively, I reach the conclusion that things are getting worse".

The word "sovereignty" in Iraq today is illusory. With more than 150,000 foreign troops in the country. A new US embassy will eventually employ 3,000 foreign service officers and will become a powerbroker behind the scenes. It will control the purse strings of reconstruction. US advisers will be sprinkled throughout key ministries.

Already, the new leadership has diverged with US authorities on a number of points, including Allawi's proposal to impose martial law, the timing of the turnover of Saddam to Iraqi custody, and the participation of militant Shiite mullah Muqtada Al Sadr in politics.

Testifying before a House Armed Services Committee on June 22, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said it may take several years before US forces are withdrawn from Iraq. A high-ranking US general also warned that "we should expect more violence, not less", in the near future.

Wolfowitz, who toured Iraq recently, said he had heard military people from the US and their allies say again and again that "the people back home just not realize how much progress is being achieved in Iraq". He added: "It's something we heard almost everywhere - from Iraqis, from Americans, from a British general down in Basra. What doesn't get through in all the reporting on problems is, there's also been enormous progress".

Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the panel's ranking Democrat, was not persuaded. Conceding that much had been accomplished in Iraq, he asserted that progress had been slowed by "the security quagmire". He added: "I see, Mr. Secretary, two Iraqs. One is the optimistic Iraq that you describe, and we thank you for your testimony. And the other Iraq is the one that I see every morning, with the violence, the death of soldiers and marines. I must tell you, it breaks my heart a little bit more every day". When Skelton asked Wolfowitz what lessons he had absorbed in the past 15 months, or roughly since all-out war ended and the mopping up and peacekeeping began, Wolfowitz responded at length about the evils of Saddam Hussein, his henchmen and their followers

Skelton then broke in: "Mr. Secretary, let me interrupt if I may. My question is, what lessons we have learned, you have learned in the last 15 months". Wolfowitz replied that military planners might have underestimated how persistent the anti-American forces might be even after the several dozen leaders of the Baghdad regime had been killed or captured. Continuing, Wolfowitz said the Iraqis themselves must eventually impose security on their country, not just to stabilise the government but to allow ordinary Iraqis to go about their lives. Skelton then asked: "You think we might be there, then, a good number of years?" Wolfowitz replied: "I think it's entirely possible. But what I think is also nearly certain is the more they step up, and they will be doing so more and more each month, the less and less we will have to do. As they take over more responsibility, we will be able to let them be in the front lines and us be in a supporting position". Iraq was not a US quagmire, said Wolfowitz - a top architect of the Iraq war, adding: "We're not stuck". (In a Washington Post-ABC News poll released on June 22, only 47% of those surveyed said the war in Iraq was worth fighting, while 52% said it was not).

Wolfowitz said discussions with Premier Allawi in Baghdad reassured him that the incoming government had realistic plans for the transition. "I would confess, going into those discussions, there was some concern on our side that (Allawi's) plans might be too grandiose, it might be more idea than substance, that they might reject the considerable progress that we believe we've made already in our own efforts to build Iraqi security forces", Wolfowitz said. While he was confident that enough Iraqis would join the country's defence forces, Wolfowitz said there was insufficient money to train and equip them. He said the Pentagon was seeking the authority to tap $500m in Defence Department funds for this purpose.

Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 226,000 Iraqis were being trained for security positions, as against the 250,000 that will probably be required. Other countries were helping with that training, he said. But Pace, a Marine Corps general, offered this assessment: "What I really wanted to say most was that we should expect more violence, not less, in the immediate weeks ahead, as our enemies understand that the Iraqi people are about to do what our enemies most fear, which is to take control of their own government".