"Within three to four years we should be able to have adequate water supply," he said in Stockholm, where he was attending the Stockholm Water Week, which groups experts and government officials from 100 countries.

Rashid said most inhabitants of Iraq's large cities had access to running water, although not in sufficient quantities.

"It is not enough because of future expansion and population growth and the system badly needs maintenance, but most big towns have adequate water supply," he said.

However, around half of the country's rural population did not, he said.

"It is an absolute crime that with all our wealth Iraq still lacks clean water," he said.

Rashid, a trained engineer and former Kurdish politician, took the water portfolio in September 2003 as a member of the transitional Iraqi government following decades of British exile.

Some 1.7 billion dollars were earmarked for improvements in the country's water system, but the soaring cost of fighting insurgents has forced officials to reprogramme budgets.

"Of course security is the most important question," Rashid said.

Iraqi insurgents have regularly targeted water installations.

In June and July they bombed a Baghdad water pipeline, cutting off supplies to half the city, a purification station and a pumping station.

According to UN figures, 97 percent of the capital's inhabitants have running water, but only 63 percent get it on a regular basis.

Rashid's timeframe for "adequate" water supply is considerably shorter than a recent one given by US General Thomas Bostick, who said in June that it would take two billion dollars a year for 12 years "to fix the water situation in Iraq, to get clean water to 100 percent of Iraqis".

Rashid acknowledged that water supply is competing with other national priorities for budget allocations and resources but said "the Iraqi people are determined" to solve the problem.

Most of Iraq's water system is half a century old. Maintenance was therefore an "an extremely important part" of his ministry's efforts, he said.

According to US army engineers, some 60 percent of drinkable water in Iraq is lost between treatment and delivery, mostly through hundreds of thousands of leaks in pipelines due to old age.

Under former leader Saddam Hussein, the system was neglected as resources were diverted to the war effort and to fighting insurgencies.

One legacy of that era, the draining of 20,000 square kilometres (7,722 square miles) of marshland in southwestern Iraq, was being reversed, Rashid said.

After Shiite insurgents fled to the marshes from Saddam Hussein's artillery, the president in 1993 ordered the area to be drained, turning the wetlands into a desert.

"It was a crime against nature and humanity," Rashid said.

As dykes built by the regime were being broken, water from the Euphrates and Tigris rivers had returned to the marshland, and with it, part of the population.

Between a quarter and a third of the so-called "marshland Arabs" had come back to their homeland over the past two years, Rashid said.

"I am hopeful that the rest will have returned in another two years time," he said.

Around half of the area had already been turned into "healthy" marshland again, he said.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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