The US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has been quoted as saying that the United States has no intention of imposing long-term control on Iraq after the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein.
"We don't want it to be an occupation - we also don't want it to be something the coalition imposes on Iraqis," the man credited as a driving force behind the invasion of Iraq by US and British troops told the Daily Telegraphnewspaper.
Wolfowitz said retired Lieutenant-General Jay Garner, earmarked by President George W. Bush to head an interim administration before Iraqis once again take control of their future, would have a limited mandate.
"We view Jay Garner's role as being, above all, to make sure that the basic services that the Iraqi people depend on for their daily lives are functioning in whatever interim period it takes before the government can take over and do it," he said.
But he rejected the insistence by Prime Minister Tony Blair, the European Union and aid groups that the United Nations should play a key part in rehabilitating post-war Iraq, relegating it instead to "a facilitating role".
With US troops on the outskirts of Baghdad, he declined to put a time frame on the likely duration of US rule once Saddam was overthrown, but insisted Garner's role would be as a facilitator rather than a proxy ruler.
"It's much more of a technocratic role than a political role," he said.
"I can't tell you the exact timing, but the reservation about leaping in with something right away is precisely that we prefer it to be something that we don't declare but that, in some way, can be an expression of genuine Iraqi views," he added.
Wolfowitz, who has had his sights on Saddam since 1979, said a lengthy period of U.S. rule would be counterproductive, if not pointless.
"There's a certain analogy to the notion that if you never take the training wheels off a kid's bicycle, he'll never learn to ride without them," he told the newspaper.
But a truly democratic Iraq - not necessarily following preconceived ideas of American or even British styles of electoral democracy - could be a landmark for the Middle East.
"I'm a little shocked at how many well-meaning people, many of them great friends of the Arabs, who seem in one way or another to accept the notion that Arabs are incapable of democracy or it's too risky," Wolfowitz said.
A democratic Iraq, he said, could have "an exemplary effect" on the whole Middle East.
Bush and Blair will meet in Belfast on Monday and Tuesday to discuss post-war Iraq and the Middle East peace process, as well as Northern Ireland's own faltering peace accord.