"In terms of time for the presence of the international forces to help us establish security and stability, I think it will be a question of months rather than years," Allawi told a joint press conference with British counterpart Geoff Hoon.

"The multinational force, in as much as its presence is needed to maintain security, will need ... to be replaced by indigenous forces, by Iraqi forces," Allawi said.

The Iraqi minister was responding to a question about how long foreign troops might be expected to remain in the country following the handover of sovereignty by the US-led coalition on June 30.

Allawi and Hoon held talks at the Ministry of Defence in central London ahead of the press conference.

The British minister refused to say whether London would be dispatching extra troops to Iraq ahead of the sovereignty transfer.

"The situation remains exactly as it was, and as I have set out on a number of occasions recently," Hoon told the press conference.

"We keep the requirement for troop levels under constant review, we are in constant contact with our officer commanding on the ground in southern Iraq, and obviously in the light of his request, his judgement of the security situation, we will make appropriate decisions.

"But we have not taken any decisions at this stage to send extra troops to Iraq."

A series of newspaper reports have said that London is preparing to send as many as 3,000 more troops to Iraq to help ensure stability ahead of June 30.

Britain currently has 7,900 troops occupying oil-rich southern Iraq, based in the city of Basra, and has declined to say as yet whether it will be sending more, possibly to replace departing Spanish personnel.

However the decision to commit further forces to Iraq could prove highly unpopular for the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, with a newspaper poll saying Tuesday that 86 percent of Britons opposed this.

Meanwhile, the proposed UN resolution on Iraq drawn up by the US and Britain must be improved if it is to ensure a credible handover of sovereignty to the Iraqi people, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said yesterday.

"We want to work on the credibility of this resolution, and for us the real problem is that the transfer of powers and sovereignty must be clear, complete and not artificial," Barnier said after talks with the EU's high representative for foreign policy Javier Solana.

"The proposal which has been tabled is not take-it-or-leave-it. That is not the spirit of the Security Council, nor indeed the spirit of the Americans and the British.

"It is a proposal which must be discussed and improved on a certain number of points touching principally the sincerity, the reality and the credibility of the process of sovereignty transfer," the minister said.