Bremer told the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television station that it could take "a year or 15 months and may take longer" to arrange an election. The remarks were made Friday and broadcast Saturday.

In his remarks, made in English and translated by the station, Bremer cited the absence of electoral laws and voter rolls as the main obstacles to a speedy vote.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, demanded elections to choose a legislature before the planned June 30 transfer of power from the U.S.-led coalition to the Iraqis.

Elsewhere, insurgents fired Saturday on a U.S. military convoy near al-Haswa, 25 miles south of Baghdad, apparently causing some casualties, witnesses said. The U.S. command in Baghdad said it had no reports of the incident

The United States and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said a vote by the end of June was not feasible, and Bremer insisted earlier this week that the deadline will not be changed.

The Americans would prefer to hand power over to an expanded Iraqi Governing Council, the 25-member body appointed by the coalition in July.

In written remarks to questions by the German magazine Der Spiegel, al-Sistani suggested he would accept a short delay in voting but demanded U.N. guarantees that there will be no more postponements.

The council itself is divided on the issue.

A Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, has suggested a delay of seven or eight months. Younadem Kana, an Assyrian Christian member of the council, said Bremer's estimate was based on the coalition's assessment of the security situation and that elections could be held much sooner.

However, Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish Sunni council member, said it would take at least a year to prepare for elections.

"I consider Bremer's statement as rational and realistic because successful elections cannot be done in less than one year," Othman told The Associated Press. "In my opinion, the important thing is not to have elections. The important thing is to have good results that would save us from troubles that might erupt due to badly prepared elections."

In an agreement reached Nov. 15 with the Governing Council, Washington planned to establish a new legislature in regional caucuses. The legislature would then select a government to take power June 30. But al-Sistani demanded that the voters choose the legislature, and support for the caucus plan within the Governing Council evaporated.

Shiites, believed to comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people, are anxious for a vote to affirm their power after decades of suppression by the Sunni minority. Sunnis fear a quick vote will further marginalize their community, closely identified with Saddam Hussein's regime.

Most of the Iraqi insurgents attacking American forces are believed to be Sunnis.

With a quick vote apparently off the table and most Iraqi leaders opposed to the caucuses, the Iraqi council and American administrators are trying to work out a new method to select a government.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that extending and expanding the Governing Council before the June 30 deadline was "an obvious option" to the impasse.

Other choices include installing a "group of wise men" to take charge in Baghdad until polls take place, Powell said in an interview with Knight-Ridder newspapers released Friday by the State Department.

Most members of the 25-member council are said to support the expansion plan. But some remain in favor of caucuses, and others propose a "national conference" along the lines of Afghanistan's loya jirga councils, said Salaheddine Muhammad Bahaaeddine, a Sunni Kurd member of the council. A few, mostly Shiites, still insist early elections are possible.

"We're still discussing ideas regarding an alternative," Bahaaeddine told the AP. "There's no agreement."

The Bush administration is under pressure from its Iraqi partners and international allies to transfer power to the Iraqis and end the military occupation. It also is eager to establish a working government and give Iraqi security forces a frontline role against the persistent guerrilla violence well ahead of November presidential elections.

In another development, unidentified assailants killed a former judge on Friday in the southern city of Basra. The attackers opened fire on the home of Jabbar Sihn al-Badran at around 10 p.m., killing him and wounding his daughter and son, family members said.

In Ramadi, an anti-coalition hotspot west of the capital, unidentified men demolished at least five police checkpoints before dawn Saturday, witnesses said.

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