WASHINGTON, Sept 27: US taxpayers will not foot the cost of running and rebuilding Iraq over the next five years, and some reconstruction tasks may be postponed due to lack of money, Paul Bremer, the US administrator for Iraq, said.

“The general assessment is that the Iraqis need something like 60 to 70 billion (dollars) over the next four or five years to put their infrastructure and their economy right,” Paul Bremer told reporters on Friday.

Iraq should be able to net five billion dollars a year from oil revenue and tax receipts starting in 2005, the target date for restoring Iraqi oil production to its maximum prewar level, Mr Bremer said.

That money should be put towards the cost of rebuilding the country instead of international debt payments or Gulf War reparations, Mr Bremer said.

But US taxpayers will not fill the gap, he insisted, placing his hopes in an international donors conference on Iraq scheduled for Oct 23-24 in Madrid.

“We hope we’ll get substantial donations from the donors conference. Some of those things will undoubtedly be postponed,” he said.

Mr Bremer’s comments came at the end of a week he spent urging the US Congress to fully fund the 20 billion dollars he has requested to run Iraq.

“What we’re focused on in the 20 billion (dollars) is the urgent and essential things. There are things that are probably nice to have in the 60 billion to 70 billion (dollars), and that’s something the Iraqi government will have to figure out how to do.” —AFP