The immediate goal is to field about 7,000 American-trained militiamen to protect supply convoys and replace American troops now guarding power plants and ammunition depots.

The new Iraqi Governing Council has strongly supported creating an Iraqi militia, which appears to go well beyond a proposal under consideration at the Pentagon to hire private contractors to provide security at sites around the country.

"Over time, it'll free up an awful lot of American forces," said Gen. John P. Abizaid, who is making his first visit to Iraq as the new head of the United States Central Command.

The persistent violence, two months after President Bush declared an end to major combat, was underscored today when two soldiers were killed and one was wounded in an ambush near Mosul in the north. Also today, an Iraqi driver for a United Nations agency died when his convoy was attacked near Baghdad.

In the southern city of Najaf, United States marines found themselves in a standoff with more than 10,000 mainly Shiite demonstrators, angered by rumors that American troops had harassed a cleric who had condemned the United States-led occupation. 

Armed resistance to the American-led occupation is coming from a small number of "professional killers" drawn from "remnants of the old regime regrouping in squad-level attacks," said the United States administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, on "Fox News Sunday."

The attacks pose "no strategic threat to us," Mr. Bremer said, in a guardedly upbeat assessment of conditions in Iraq. He cited as signs of progress the restoration of basic services, economic reforms and the recent establishment of the Governing Council, and he said it was "quite possible" that a constitutional conference, probably to open in September, could write a constitution that would lead to elections and a new government within a year.

Eventually, General Abizaid said, the Iraqi militia may also join American soldiers in joint raids against guerrilla fighters, who he said were waging increasingly sophisticated attacks against American troops.

The plan to establish an Iraqi civil defense force, first reported in The Washington Post, reflects the Pentagon's urgent priority to quell the mounting attacks against American troops and to use an interim Iraqi force to help do that until a larger Iraqi national army is formed in the coming months and years.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who is nearing the end of a five-day mission in Iraq, has heard repeatedly from tribal and civic leaders that the occupation authority must give Iraqis a greater role in governing and securing their country in order for the American-led effort to have credibility with the Iraqi public.

Today, Mr. Wolfowitz said that recruiting Iraqis for security and intelligence tasks was essential for the rebuilding of Iraq to succeed. Small numbers of Iraqis and Iraqi-Americans have already served as interpreters and scouts for American commandos and regular forces. "We need more of these people," Mr. Wolfowitz said. 

Establishing the militia as an interim Iraqi force is an acknowledgment that training and mobilizing an Iraqi national army will take years to accomplish. Bush administration officials in Washington and American commanders here say they cannot afford to wait that long.

Under the American plan, eight battalions with about 850 Iraqi militiamen each will train under and then work with army divisions in various regions around the country, said Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commander of allied forces in Iraq. After 45 days, the second group of eight battalions, or nearly 7,000 more militiamen, could be recruited and trained, General Sanchez said.