Rumsfeld said the country has not descended into full-scale civil war but sectarian tensions are high in the wake of a bombing of a Shiite mosque February 22.

He again accused Iran of sending agents into Iraq to do "damaging and dangerous things," and warned that US forces would take "appropriate" action to stop them.

"The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur it is, from the security standpoint, to have the security forces deal with it to the extent they are able to do it," Rumsfeld said.

But, testifying before a Senate committee with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and his top generals, Rumsfeld argued the problem was more political than one of security.

"The need is for the principal players of that country to recognize the seriousness of the situation and to come together to form a government of national unity that will govern from the center, and to do it in a reasonably prompt manner.

"And that will be what it takes, in my view, to further calm the situation," he said.

General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, later told reporters that, while sectarian tensions are very high, "It's my impression that Iraq is not moving toward civil war."

Rumsfeld went before the Senate Appropriations Committee with Rice and the generals to defend the administration's request for nearly 72 billion dollars in emergency funding, most of it for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia, said the request would push total funding for the war in Iraq to an "astounding" 320 billion dollars.

It comes as a "cloud of peril and uncertainty" hangs over Iraq, which only narrowly missed descending into civil war in recent days, Byrd said.

"Mr. Secretary, how can the Congress be assured that the funds in this bill won't put our troops in the middle of a full-blown Iraqi civil war?" he asked.

"It's certainly not the intention of the military commanders to allow that to happen," Rumsfeld responded.

"At least thus far the situation has been that the Iraqi security forces could for the most part deal with the problems that exist."

Abizaid said, "The security situation in the country, while changing from insurgency to sectarian violence, is controllable by Iraqi security forces and multinational forces."

"It's also my impression you have to move quickly to a government of national unity," Abizaid said.

Iraqi political leaders have struggled to form a new government following December 15 elections in which the Shiites won a large but not a decisive parliamentary majority.

Rumsfeld rebuffed suggestions of a US troops withdrawal timetable to pressure Iraqi politicians to compromise.

"The Iranians don't want us there ... And I don't think the idea of strengthening the hand of those people who do not wish the Iraqi people well would be a good idea for the president," he said.

In her testimony, Rice also singled out Iran, which Washington suspects of seeking nuclear weapons, as the biggest single US security challenge in the Middle East, calling it "the central banker for terrorism" in the region.

Rumsfeld and General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States had no plans to attack Iran.

"But if there are Iranians fighting against us in Iraq then, of course, we would treat them like the enemy in Iraq," Pace said.

related report

US Vows No Permanent Bases In Iraq Baghdad (AFP) Mar 13 - US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said Saturday that his country did not want permanent military bases in Iraq and that he was willing to talk to Iran about the war-torn country's future.

"We want Iraq to stand on its own feet, we have no goal of establishing permanent bases here," he said in an interview with Iraq's Ash-Sharqiya television, according to a transcript obtained by AFP.

"Our goal is a working, a workable government, so that we can leave Iraq and let Iraqis handle all their circumstance themselves. That's our goal, and were very serious about this, we mean it," he said.

The ambassador said he was willing to speak with Iran about Iraq's future, stressing however that the US would not let its concerns over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons' drive influence its policies in Iraq.

"I have offered to the Iranians that we are willing to talk with them about our differences with regard to Iraq," he said.

"Iran says that the United States wants to promote sectarianism here," he said. "I have talked to you about nothing but unity and the effort by others who are enemies of Iraq to promote sectarianism and division."

US officials have maintained that Iran is undermining Iraqi reconstruction, influencing its politics and even actively supporting the insurgency there.

While Khalilzad admitted differences between Washington and Tehran, he vowed they would not affect Iraq policy -- provided Iran behaved likewise.

"The United States has many differences with Iran and Iran has differences with the United States," he said.

"We have not tried to import our differences with Iran here in Iraq and to impose our differences on Iraq-Iran relations ... and we don't want Iran to export into Iraq its differences with us, we will react very negatively to that."

Khalilzad also admitted that Washington had made mistakes since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, but did not elaborate on what they were.

"We certainly have made some mistakes ourselves ... We did make mistakes. But we have learned from mistakes and tried to adjust, that's our style, to sort of keep on going, adjust as the circumstances warrant."

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