US to stay in Iraq for at least one year: Powell

"The Iraqis must draft their constitution... that could take several months. Then there have to be elections. It would be difficult to imagine that all that could be done in less than a year," Powell said, according to the French text.

It would be difficult, he added "to say when we'll have a suitable level of security throughout the country," in order for US troops to pull out of Iraq, but he insisted that "security will improve."

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Powell is currently in Madrid at a conference grouping donors from dozens of countries aimed at generating billions of dollars in aid to rebuild the country battered by years of sanctions and an intense US-led war.

US officials have insisted that Iraq must have a new constitution and fresh elections before it can hand over to a democratically-elected Iraqi government, while critics have said the hand-over of power should occur first.

Meanwhile, a bomb blast wounded a US soldier in the flashpoint town of Fallujah Thursday as troops struggled to defeat the guerrilla cells waging daily attacks.

As the fighting dragged on, a new poll warned more and more Iraqis view the US forces as "occupiers" not liberators and want an Islamic regime.

The top US military commander in Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, said his forces were facing between 20 and 25 attacks a day, although, in the last three weeks, the number had, on some occasions, soared as high as 35.

On top of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein loyalists, the general warned he expected more attacks from Ansar al-Islam, an Iraqi group believed to be linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network.

"We do expect the AI (Ansar al-Islam) and AQ (al-Qaeda) will continue operations in this country," Sanchez told reporters Wednesday.