Iraq will need tens of billions of dollars in contributions from overseas in the next year to fund the reconstruction effort, the top US civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said in an interview published on Wednesday.

Bremer told The Washington Post that Iraqi revenue would not be enough to cover the bill for economic needs that he described as "almost impossible to exaggerate."

Explaining the huge cost of the project, Bremer said it would cost $2 billion just to meet current electrical demand and an estimated $16 billion over four years to deliver clean water to all Iraqis.

The figures, which must be added to the $4 billion the Pentagon spends each month on military operations in Iraq, offer the latest evidence that the price of the Iraqi occupation is growing substantially, The Post reported.

Quick revenues from Iraq's vast oil resources have failed to materialise because of sabotage and looting.

Bremer told the newspaper he hoped to return Iraqi oil production to prewar levels by October 2004. But he noted that even when deliveries return to 2002 levels, the industry would not produce enough revenue to cover the cost of reconstruction.