Unity govt needed to avert Iraqi civil war

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 Shia 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 recognise the seriousness of the situation and to come together to form a government of national unity that will govern from the centre, 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.