WASHINGTON, April 20: A senior US lawmaker said on Sunday the United States had underestimated the first phase of what he envisaged could be a four to five-year effort to form a government.

The United States had not planned the post-war transition as carefully as the military campaign that removed Saddam from power, said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“They started very late,” Lugar said of US efforts to restore political stability to Iraq.

The power vacuum left by the end of Saddam’s rule had hurt many in Iraq, he said.

“A gap has occurred and that has brought some considerable suffering,” he said. Among those rushing in to fill the void are clerics and religious groups, he added.

Lugar called on the Bush administration to give clear estimates of the duration and cost of US involvement in post-war Iraq.

“I simply say it is not clear to the Congress or the American people what the cost of this will be, what the budgetary aspects are, how the currency, how the banking system, how international trade, how any of this works, and clearly a commitment for the longevity required,” Lugar said.

He said the political transition to a democracy in Iraq could take between four to five years.

“I would think at least we ought to be thinking of a period of five years of time. That may understate it,” he said.

Pro-American Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi called on Sunday for US forces to remain in Iraq until the country holds elections, a process he said could take two years.

Chalabi played down the significance of reports of assertions of power by religious groups in some cities.

“I do not think this should be read as anyone trying to set up an authority or to challenge whatever emerges from the process of an interim authority,” he said during an interview on ABC television’s “This Week.”

Bush: Speaking to reporters in Texas, US President George W. Bush would not predict how long US troops would remain in Iraq, saying he would not declare the war over until the commanding general, Tommy Franks, said so.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said earlier on Sunday that the US-led forces were preparing to proclaim victory in the next few days.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said US troops would remain as long as it took to secure the country and then would leave.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, shied away from saying there would be a “permanent” US military force in Iraq but said the United States would be required to keep a presence in the region.

“We’ve come to stay, but we’ve come to leave,” Roberts said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I remember when President (Bill) Clinton indicated we would be in the Balkans for about a year. Now it’s a decade later. We’re still there, and we still need to be there,” Roberts said. The NATO-led peacekeeping operation in Bosnia began in December 1995 and, although much reduced, still numbers over 10,000 troops.

Sen. Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he would expect US troop presence to be “an evolutionary process” with a significant number early on until the situation settled down.

“We’re going to have to be there for a while, not permanently, but for a while, because we don’t want to win the war and then lose the peace,” Bayh told the Fox program.

Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, one of the strongest advocates for military action against Iraq, was more optimistic, telling CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “a transition could be short — a matter of months. I would hope that it would only be a matter of months.”

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told CNN’s “Late Edition” US troops would likely “stay longer than two years.”

Former CIA Director James Woolsey said the United States would have to maintain a military presence of “some substantial degree” in the Gulf region.—Reuters