WASHINGTON (AP) – Commanders in Iraq probably will expand their troops by several thousand as the January elections approach, the No 2 commander of US forces in the Middle East said yesterday.

Lt Gen Lance L Smith told a Pentagon news conference that no final decisions have been made and that the size of the troop increase will depend in part on whether the insurgency grows or weakens in the aftermath of the Fallujah offensive, which he called a major success.

Smith estimated that commanders would ask for about a brigade’s worth of extra troops, which would be roughly 5,000. He said that probably would be achieved by keeping some units that were scheduled to serve 10 months in Iraq for an extra two months. He did not name the units.

There now are about 138,000 US troops in Iraq, he said.

“We will make a further assessment as we get a little bit closer” to the elections scheduled for late January, “and as we understand what the impact of Fallujah is on the entire country,” he said.

Smith said he believed that terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was still in Iraq but that the US-Iraqi offensive this past week had eliminated Fallujah as a Zarqawi base of operations.

The three-star general also said it appeared that Zarqawi and senior leaders of the al-Qaeda terrorist network had attempted to communicate, probably by courier, from Pakistan or Afghanistan.

“We know for a fact that there are attempted communications between them,” he said. “There is a relationship between al-Qaeda senior leadership and Zarqawi. How to characterise that, we don’t know yet.”

That does not mean that al-Qaeda is offering instruction or guidance to the insurgency in Iraq, he said. “I wouldn’t characterise it as giving guidance, other than broad philosophy.”

The coordinator of US reconstruction work in Iraq, meanwhile, said security risks to workers in Sunni-dominated parts of the country have grown worse over the past six weeks.

“We’re having greater difficulties,” said William Taylor, director of the Iraqi Reconstruction

Management Office in the US Embassy in Baghdad. “We’re worried that in some areas – again, not all – in some areas it would now be difficult to have elections,” and so it is important that reconstruction work be accelerated so voting can take place nationwide in late January, Taylor said.

He spoke from Baghdad in a video teleconference with reporters at the Pentagon.

He said reconstruction is continuing in southern and northeastern Iraq without serious problems.