WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House refused to say yesterday whether the top US civilian official in Iraq after Saddam Hussein's ouster had asked the president for more troops to deal with the rapid descent of post-war Iraq into chaos.

In remarks published yesterday, the official, L Paul Bremer, said he arrived in Iraq on May 6, 2003 to find "horrid" looting and a very unstable situation - throwing new fuel onto the presidential campaign issue of whether the United States had sufficiently planned for the post-war situation in Iraq.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Bremer said during an address to an insurance group. It released a summary of his remarks in Washington.

"We never had enough troops on the ground," Bremer said, while insisting that he was "more convinced than ever that regime change was the right thing to do."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to say whether Bremer had pleaded with President George W Bush for more troops. "We never get into reading out all the conversations they had," McClellan said.

Later, in an unusual public acknowledgment of internal dissent, the Bush campaign said that Bremer and the military brass had clashed on troop levels.

"Ambassador Bremer differed with the commanders in the field," said campaign spokesman Brian Jones. "That is his right, but the president has always said that he will listen to his commanders on the ground and give them the support they need for victory."

Kerry said yesterday that Vice President Dick Cheney should acknowledge mistakes made in Iraq, pointing to remarks by Bremer that more troops had been needed in the aftermath of war.

"I hope tonight Mr Cheney can acknowledge those mistakes," the Democratic presidential candidate said, referring to the debate between the vice president and Kerry's running mate Senator John Edwards. "I hope Mr Cheney can take responsibility."

Kerry said there was a "long list of mistakes" that the Bush administration had made in Iraq.

"I'm glad that Paul Bremer has finally admitted at least two of them, and the president of the United States needs to tell the truth to the American people," Kerry said. The other mistake, Kerry said, was a failure to contain post-war mayhem and violence.

In a statement Monday night to The Washington Post, Bremer said he fully supported the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq.

"I believe that we currently have sufficient troop levels in Iraq," he said in the e-mailed statement, according to yesterday's edition of the Post. He said references to troops levels related to the situation when he first arrived in Baghdad "when I believed we needed either more coalition troops or Iraqi security forces to address the looting."

In an earlier speech Sept 17 at DePauw University, Bremer said he frequently raised the issue of too few troops within the Bush administration and "should have been even more insistent" when his advice was rejected. "The single most important change - the one thing that would have improved the situation - would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout" the occupation, Bremer said, according to an Indiana newspaper.

Yesterday, Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said the tempo of attacks against remaining insurgent strongholds will be escalated until armed opponents of the government are crushed.

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