MORE IRAQI POLICE

Eager to have more Iraqis take responsibility for their country's security, American officials here are planning to ferry as many as 28,000 Iraqis to Eastern Europe for an intensive police training course.

Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York City Police commissioner in charge of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said in an interview that American officials had secured permission from the government of Hungary to set up a large police academy inside an old Soviet military base there.

Mr. Kerik said the extraordinary measures were necessary because the existing police academies in Iraq were not large enough to train that many officers in the next several months.

His plan is part of a larger effort by senior American officials here to press the Iraqis to take a greater share in running the country. The Bush administration is also under growing political pressure at home to lighten the load on the American forces here.

"We want to turn Iraqi security over to the Iraqis," Mr. Kerik said. "This is the only way to do it quickly."

He said the prospective Iraqi officers would receive eight weeks of intensive training by Americans in Hungary and then return to Iraq. Early this year, the site was also used to train a group of Iraqi volunteers to work with American troops.

After the men return from training, they would be given four to six months of on-the-job instruction, similar to the training officers undergo in the United States.