Ambassador Ryan Crocker said he would lead Washington's negotiations with Baghdad on an agreement that will govern the U.S. presence there with that in mind, although the next president may "reset the conditions" for troop withdrawals.

The "need for combat operations" in Iraq will be there "certainly into next year, but how far I couldn't say," he said in an interview at the State Department.

Crocker will be the top U.S. negotiator in talks with the Iraqis expected to begin this month. He said he expected the eventual "status of forces agreement" would allow for great flexibility in pursuing insurgents while not setting definite troop levels.

"I don't think al-Qaida is going to have gone away after this year and we and the Iraqis are going to want to make sure we are able to pursue them, but questions of force levels and what not, those will be executive decisions by this president and by the next," he said. "This agreement is in no way going to get into that executive decision prerogative."

Crocker declined to speculate on how the U.S. presidential election campaign — particularly calls for troop withdrawals by Democratic candidates — will affect the negotiations.

But he stressed that U.S. troops are now, and will be for the foreseeable future, "the center of gravity" in Iraq. "If someone wants to reset the conditions, then obviously we'll do the best we can within the context but those aren't assumptions that we start with."

"Our redeployments have to be conditions-based," he said.

Crocker would not speculate on whether President Bush's planned force drawdown would continue after the summer. One Army brigade and two Marine battalions have already returned home and will not be replaced. Four other Army brigades are to depart by July, leaving 15 brigades, or roughly 130,000 to 135,000 troops in Iraq.

He said Friday's suicide bombings by two women that killed scores of people in Baghdad underscored the resilience of al-Qaida, its desire to sow instability and the U.S. need to combat it.

"There is nothing they won't do if they think it will work in creating carnage and the political fallout that comes from that," Crocker said. "They have found a different, deadly way to do this. "Al-Qaida has been damaged, but ... it is still there, it is resilient and it is determined."

Earlier, remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on pet bazaars in Baghdad, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital this spring.

"Their car bomb capabilities have been badly disrupted so now, as we saw today and as we've seen for some time, they are moving toward suicide vests, in this case suicide vests worn by women," Crocker said. "No one's doing victory dances, and today's horrific bombings illustrate why that's the case."

"We and the Iraqis are going to have to stay on this until this threat is eliminated," he said. "It's going to be hard, it's going to be uneven and there are going to be days like today."

Crocker also said that Iran continues to play a negative role in training and supplying insurgents with weapons and explosives, but made clear he remains open to renewing a three-way security dialogue with Iranian and Iraqi officials.

A new meeting between the three sides could happen in "the next week or so," he said. But he noted that he had expected such talks to take place in early January after the United States indicated it was willing to participate a month earlier.

"The Iranians may be ready to come back to the table and if they are, we'll be there," Crocker said. "I am perfectly ready to sit down with my counterpart and would expect to do so."

However, he said a lower-level meeting of security officials would likely proceed any ambassadorial meeting, which would be his fourth with the Iranian ambassador to Iraq since he arrived in Baghdad nearly one year ago.

Another Iraqi neighbor, Syria, which Washington accuses of allowing foreign fighters to enter Iraq from its territory, appears to have clamped down on such border crossings, Crocker said.

"We have seen a downturn in the number of suicide bombers coming across" the border and that "was not just a coincidence," he said.

Security issues along with Arab support, including appointing ambassadors to Iraq, will be main agenda items at a meeting of foreign ministers of Iraq's neighbors to be held in Kuwait in early April, Crocker said.

He lamented that despite promises no Arab nation has yet to establish a permanent diplomatic presence in Iraq and urged regional leaders Egypt and Saudi Arabia to send ambassadors to Baghdad.

"I'm getting a little lonely out there," Crocker said.

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