WASHINGTON Ñ The Bush administration is engaged in a debate over the need to form an alliance as part of any effort to topple the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The administration debate appears to pit the State Department against the Defense Department. Secretary of State Colin Powell is said to be urging that the alliance formed for the war against Afghanistan be recruited in any campaign against Iraq.

But Pentagon officials said a U.S.-led war against Iraq would not require a broad-based alliance. They said such allies as Britain, Kuwait and Turkey would be needed for a military campaign against Baghdad.

So far, Arab allies of the United States as well as France and Russia have opposed any U.S. campaign against Iraq. Turkey has also expressed opposition, but officials said they are open to a reassessment.

U.S. officials said that so far Bush has not received a formal plan for the next stage of the U.S.-led war against terrorism. But they said the issue has been raised several times with the president, who has received a range of assessments.

"The president has made no decisions with respect to what the next phase of our campaign against terrorism will be," Powell said on Sunday.

"Moreover, none of the president's advisors, those of us who have the responsibility to advise the president Ñ myself, Secretary Rumsfeld, the vice president, Dr. Rice Ñ none of us have made individually or collectively recommendations yet to the president as to what we should do in the next phase."

Still, the officials said President George Bush appears to be examining the Pentagon argument. They said Bush had been warned by Powell in September against a Pentagon assessment that aerial bombing can topple the Taliban regime.

That warning, officials said, proved unfounded.

Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Department Policy Board and regarded as close to the Pentagon leadership, has issued the most explicit call for a U.S. strike against Baghdad. Perle said the United States does not need the broad-based coalition it achieved in the 1991 Gulf war.

"We could not have done Desert Storm [Gulf war] as it was done without an alliance," Perle said. "An alliance today is really not essential, in my opinion. We don't need the bases, or at least we don't need much in the way of bases. And those bases that we do need are in places where individual arrangements can be made Ñ with Uzbeks, who are interested in what we can do for Uzbekistan and there's a lot we can do and it isn't really very expensive."

Perle told the Foreign Policy Research Institute on Nov. 14 that an alliance would only limit U.S. military option. He said that unlike the 1991 Gulf war, the current U.S.-led war against terrorism was imposed on the American people.

"There's going to be a Phase Two," Perle said in remarks released over the weekend. "If there is no Phase Two, there can be no victory in the war against terrorism. At the top of the list for Phase 2 is Iraq."

Perle said a successful military campaign against Afghanistan and Iraq would scare other terrorist sponsors. He mentioned Iran, Lebanon, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stressed that Perle was not speaking for the administration. But Rumsfeld agreed that Saddam's regime cannot be ignored for long.

"I think they are a threat," Rumsfeld said. "They have already gone after their neighbor Kuwait. They have threatened northern Saudi Arabia.

He is a person who has described the moderate Arab regimes in the region as illegitimate. I think left alone he is a danger in the region, which is why we have Operation Northern Watch and Operation Southern Watch with our coalition partners to keep him contained."

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