President Bush on Tuesday reaffirmed his commitment to the transfer of sovereignty on June 30 to a still-undefined Iraqi authority, painting a picture of Iraqis increasingly in charge of their own fate.

"On June 30th, when the flag of free Iraq is raised, Iraqi officials will assume full responsibility for the ministries of government," Bush said in a prime-time news conference called to defend his Iraq policy after a week of bloody violence.

But he made clear US forces in the country -- 135,000 at present -- will stay and Secretary of State Colin Powell last week said the United States hoped to reach agreements to keep Iraqi security forces under their command.

"We have fenced off one of the primary responsibilities of a sovereign government," Richard Murphy, a Council on Foreign Relations analyst and former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said of the desire to keep Iraqi forces under US command.

The United States now rules Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority and will retain enormous influence through an embassy with some 3,000 people it plans to establish in Baghdad.

Analysts said it was inevitable Washington would insist on control of Iraqi forces, some of which have refused to fight in the fierce clashes over the past week, if only to ensure that US forces and their Iraqi allies do not shoot one another.

But it is also the most obvious example of how Iraq is unlikely to exercise full sovereignty come July 1.

"You can't really have an independent government going out there and doing things that are going to have to be supported by our military, whether that means for example closing down a mosque or a newspaper," said Edward Walker, a former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel. "I don't see how we could expose our troops to decisions that are not in our control."