THE man charged with rebuilding Iraq has admitted that it will take tens of billions of pounds and many more years of hard work to replace the country’s battered infrastructure and bring back basic services.

William Taylor, head of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, described agonisingly slow progress on a mission hampered by sabotage and terrorism, spiralling security costs and a series of false starts. “There is a long way to go,” he said. Mr Taylor previously headed reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

Although Washington has pledged $21 billion (£12 billion), only $7.5 billion has been spent because of the difficulties in completing contracts, given the bloody insurgency. A total of 295 civilian contractors working on American projects have been killed in Iraq in the past two years. Providing security guards and other means of protection accounts for as much as 16 per cent of the cost of a contract.

Only 57 out of 160 planned electricity projects are finished and 47 out 147 water treatment contracts have been completed. Despite the $6 billion allocated to those services, a recent United Nations survey found that 85 per cent of Iraqi households lacked reliable electricity and only 54 per cent had access to clean water.

Mr Taylor predicted that the overall cost of rebuilding Iraq after three wars and a decade of sanctions would probably be much higher than the original estimate of $70 billion. He insisted that his team had recorded some successes, such as the delivery overland of a 400-tonne gas turbine this year to a power station near Kirkuk, work on a water treatment facility in Sadr City, the Shia slum in Baghdad, and the reconstruction of the city of Fallujah, which was badly damaged in an American offensive last November.

He said that he was careful about publicising his successes. “I remember nine or ten months ago we announced a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a water treatment plant. The terrorists attacked and 33 children were killed in a school next door,” he said.

The continued lack of security in Iraq has apparently led the Pentagon to conclude that it will have to build four huge military bases in Iraq, where thousands of US troops could be garrisoned for years to come.

US military officers told The Washington Post that the Bush Administration intends to withdraw gradually from most of the more than 100 bases, which accommodate about 138,000 US troops.

The bases would be handed over to the Iraqi security forces, which are still being trained and equipped to take on the main security role in Iraq. Already this year the Americans have withdrawn from 13 bases in Iraq and by the end of the year plan to vacate some key positions, such as the former presidential palaces in Mosul and Tikrit.

Nevertheless, the Americans plan to keep several thousand troops in each of the four bases earmarked for strengthening and upgrading under the proposals. A brigade-size ground force backed by air power will remain at Balad, just north of Baghdad, al-Asad in western Iraq, Tallil, in the south, and one base in the north, at Arbil or Qayyarah.

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