The Defence Department has drawn up a force reduction plan, the magazine said quoting two officials who took part in the work.

There are currently about 140,000 American troops in Iraq.

The plan would tie in with a force reduction laid out in a British Defence Ministry memo leaked to media last month. It said Washington hoped to hand over control of security to Iraqi forces in 14 of 18 Iraqi provinces by early 2006, allowing it to slash overall US-led troop levels to 66,000 from 176,000.

General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said last week that the United States hopes to heavily reduce its troop numbers in 2006 if Iraq can keep to the timeline set out in the interim constitution, which calls for elections for a permanent government by December 15, 2005.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.