BRUSSELS - Don't expect to see the NATO flag flying in post-war Iraq for some time yet.

　　None of the Allies said "no" this week when US Secretary of State Colin Powell urged NATO to consider a more robust role, but officials say nothing will come of it until sovereignty is returned to the Iraqis and the United Nations gets a foothold there.

　　"We will have a political consensus in the alliance once we see a more critical mass of real preparation for transfer (of power) to the Iraqi people," Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana, whose country joins NATO next year, told reporters.

　　"Also a UN role ... will be conducive for some members of NATO who are today still resistant to the idea of NATO having a more explicit role in Iraq," he said.

　　Facing mounting casualties, the US last month revealed details of a new political plan to transfer sovereignty to Iraqis faster than previously envisaged.

　　Under the plan, a transitional government would be selected by the end of next June in order to take over sovereignty from the US-British occupying powers in July.

　　"You can't have the alliance subordinating itself to its own members, the Americans and the British," said one NATO diplomat. "So we can't think about going in there before they get out."

　　Given Washington's timetable for Iraq, officials say, NATO could set itself - or more likely start the planning for - a late-2004 role at next June's summit in Istanbul.

　　Much will depend on France and Germany, Europe's most outspoken opponents of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

　　Washington has been careful not to force the debate on a more direct NATO involvement in Iraq for fear of provoking a repeat of the damaging pre-war crisis within the alliance.

　　One diplomat said the anti-war camp in fact raised no objections to Powell's Iraq proposal last week partly out of deference to his more emollient tone on their plans for European Union defence. "Silence does not mean assent," he said.

　　Dangerous, unpopular

　　NATO currently provides behind-the-scenes support to a 23-nation division of troops led by Poland in south-central Iraq, and 18 of the 26 current and future members of the alliance have a military presence in the country.

　　Powell suggested last week that one option would be for the alliance to take command of the Polish-led division, just as it took over the multinational peacekeeping force in the Afghan capital, Kabul, four months ago.

　　One big benefit of NATO's takeover in Kabul was that it ended the disruption caused by having to find new lead nations for the force as the command rotated every six months.

　　Indeed, diplomats say Poland and Spain are among the keenest to see NATO take the plunge in Iraq because - with the largest contingents in the multinational division - they see it as a means of ensuring their troops return sooner rather than later from a mission which is dangerous and far from popular at home.

　　The Afghan peacekeeping operation, NATO's first deployment of troops outside Europe, has been hailed by NATO Secretary-General George Robertson as evidence that instead of "going out of business" the Cold War alliance is now "going out of area" to deal with new and global security threats.

　　But he kept a cool head last Friday when asked for his comment on Powell's appeal for alliance help in Iraq.

　　"We have not yet come to the stage of discussing whether a wider role is appropriate ... that will probably come next year," he said. "At the moment our preoccupation is with Afghanistan."

　　Powell twinned his appeal on Iraq with a suggestion that NATO should eventually move beyond peacekeeping in Afghanistan to take command of the more robust US-led operation hunting down Taliban militants and al Qaeda operatives there.

　　That would be a tall enough order for the alliance, whose European contingent Robertson only last week described as "a flabby giant with huge military expenditure, enormous paper armies, large amounts of equipment, all of which are completely useless for dealing with tomorrow's crises".

　　Indeed, it is not clear what NATO nations could offer the US in Iraq in terms of military muscle.

　　As Robertson puts it, NATO's 18 non-US members have some 1.4 million men and uniform, and yet with only 55,000 deployed abroad they all complain that they are over-stretched.