WASHINGTON, April 6 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - As the U.S. and British forces are in fierce fighting with the Iraqi forces for the eighteenth day in a row, the Pentagon did not rule out Sunday, April 6, a “prolonged” military presence in the Arab country, comparable to that in Germany after World War.

Asked about the likelihood of such a presence, deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Fox News: "It is a possibility."

A first step would be to set up an administration run by the U.S.-led forces, which would eventually hand over to Iraqis, he said, however admitted that the Baghdad government still controls large parts of Baghdad.

"So we need to set up a process, and this interim authority is a bridge to the process that creates a legitimate government of Iraq," Wolfowitz said.

But the he said he did not have a timetable for the transition at this stage.

"It's going to depend a lot on how people are able to come out from inside the country to express themselves, how able Iraqis are to come together," the U.S. official said.

Asked if he expected the U.S.-led forces would be able to transfer power to a new Iraqi administration within six months of winning the war, Wolfowitz said the handover "will probably will take more time than that".

"We have had an experience in northern Iraq where Saddam Hussein's forces were pushed out of that part of the country in early April 1991 by a coalition force that included U.S., British, and several other European countries," he said.

"That force left, I believe, on September 1, 1991, and people had been running their own affairs reasonably successfully," he said.

But with Washington's indications to quickly install an interim authority in Iraq, tension was also already palpable within the Bush administration, with Pentagon and State Department at loggerheads over both how to administer postwar Iraq and who should control humanitarian aid.

Two top U.S. senators, in a column published Sunday in The Washington Post, said the United States need not, and could not take sole responsibility for post-war Iraq, and should instead seek to involve its key allies via the United Nations.

Democrat Joseph Biden and Republican Chuck Hagel, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cited the need to share the economic burden, fight resentment in the Middle East and overcome questions from many parts of the world about U.S. motives in Iraq.

Top U.S. officials, including President George Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, are on board that the world body should not play any role in post-Saddam Iraq.

“They see no use for a U.N. role, describing the international body as 'irrelevant',” U.S. officials told The Observer.

Both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times urged an inclusive international approach to the administration and rebuilding of Iraq.

"If the United States comes to be perceived as isolated in its occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, sustaining the incipient goodwill for its mission will be far harder," the Washington Post warned.

In an editorial titled "A Clean, Brief Occupation," the Los Angeles Times noted that "keeping the U.S. in charge indefinitely would only fuel hatred from those who say the United States aims to colonize first Iraq and then the rest of the Middle East.

"The UN should seek a larger role in the name of quelling the inevitable violent fallout of that hate," it said.

Blair is facing a tough opposition in his Labor government as to Washington's plans to keep sole hands on Iraq.

Blair's International Development Secretary Clare Short is thought to have agreed not to resign last month after receiving assurances from Blair over the U.N.'s role in post-war Iraq.

Robin Cook shook the government when he resigned as Leader of the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament, on March 17, three days before Britain went to war alongside the United States.

Cook, foreign secretary between 1997 and 2001, stepped down because he could not accept responsibility for British involvement in Iraq without international backing.

Other European countries also showed their disagreement with the U.S. plans to sideline the United Nations in Iraq.

German Defense Minister Peter Struck also insisted that Europe could not be expected to contribute troops or money to help Iraq's reconstruction if the United States were running the country.

In an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau, he said that Europe wanted the United Nations to be in charge of Iraq's post-war rehabilitation.