WASHINGTON, Aug 25: A high-level independent panel has blamed Secretary of Defence Donald H. Rumsfeld and his team for failing to plan smartly for occupying Iraq after the US troops defeated the Iraqi military.

The four-member panel that Mr Rumsfeld had appointed to investigate abuses at US military prisons concluded that Mr Rumsfeld's slow response in dealing with the Iraqi insurgency last summer worsened the situation.

The high-level panel _ led by one former defence secretary, James R. Schlesinger, and including another former defence secretary, Harold Brown, a retired four-star general and a former Republican member of Congress - observed that Mr Rumsfeld played a key role in shaping the policies that led to the present mess in Iraq.

But all the four members of the panel rejected calls for Mr Rumsfeld's resignation, saying that it would not serve any purpose. The panel's report, released at a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday afternoon, also gave credence to Mr Rumsfeld's critics who said his invasion plan called for too few troops, half as many as were used in the 1991 invasion.

Before the invasion, the US Army Chief of Staff, Gen Eric K. Shinseki, said publicly that he thought the plan lacked sufficient manpower. Some retired generals also backed him.

The criticism surfaced again when widespread looting erupted in Iraq and the United States did not have enough troops to deal with it. But Mr Rumsfeld said the lootings were "untidy signs" of the "new found freedom" of the Iraqi people. Gen Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also backed his boss.

But Mr Brown, one of the members of the independent panel, echoed the sentiments of Mr Rumsfeld's critics when he said that the Pentagon made a blunder in assuming that "a stable successor" government would follow the collapse of the Saddam government.

Mr Schlesinger, the panel's chairman, said the Pentagon "did look at history books. Unfortunately, it was the wrong history" when making assumptions about Iraq. The Pentagon, he said, failed to anticipate that an internal turmoil would follow the occupation.

Instead it was preparing to deal with an influx of refugees as had happened after the 1991 war. The panel also faulted Mr Rumsfeld and his team for a slow response to the outbreak of the anti-US resistance in Iraq last summer. "We were slow, at least in the judgment of the members of this panel, to adapt accordingly after the insurgency started in the summer of 2003," said Mr Schlesinger.