U.S. Forces Plan Lower Profile

But the commanders also said there were signs for worry, particularly regarding the continued strength of the insurgency. For instance, in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, which has been a center of resistance to the U.S. occupation, the number of insurgent fighters was reported by U.S. military authorities to be largely unchanged despite the deaths of hundreds in battles since April. The dead have been replaced by other fighters, many of them teenagers, U.S. authorities said.

Commanders also warned that U.S. forces were being spread thin. In the northern city of Mosul, military authorities noted that roadside bomb attacks rose after some U.S. troops were sent south for other duty, as the drop in the American presence allowed insurgents more time to plant the bombs.

Iraq's long borders with Syria and Iran also remain largely uncontrolled because of a shortage of patrols, according to U.S. commanders in Mosul and Tikrit.

"I'm stretched about as thin as I'd want to be with 22,000 troops," a senior officer told Wolfowitz in a briefing attended by reporters on the condition that names not be cited.

Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the second-ranking commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, acknowledged that as U.S. forces shift to more supporting tasks in Iraq, such as training Iraqi forces and protecting leaders of the new interim government, they will be even more hard-pressed to muster troops to conduct combat operations.

"By the time you put troops to task, the troops available to do offensive actions are less," Metz told reporters in an interview last week.

Still, Metz rejected the idea that more U.S. troops should be sent to Iraq. Instead, he said, greater efforts would be made -- through improved intelligence-gathering and other means -- to use available troops more efficiently.

The shortfall that appeared to concern Wolfowitz the most was not in troops but in the money that U.S. commanders have used to pay for schools, hospitals and other smaller-scale local projects that have improved community services and fostered goodwill. The funds, known as the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP), have been parceled out by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ceases to exist with the transfer of sovereignty.

Wolfowitz said Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, had expressed a willingness to provide "bridge funds" for "CERP-like" projects.

The offer was indicative of the kind of cooperation that U.S. and Iraqi authorities said would be needed for the next phase of relations to work smoothly, replacing the days when U.S. commanders could operate unilaterally.