As the White House debates keeping a much smaller force in Iraq after 2011, it must decide whether to axe a peacekeeping role in the country's volatile north, officials and analysts said Wednesday.

Amid negotiations with Iraqi leaders on the scope of a future US military mission, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has approved a tentative proposal to retain as few as 3,000-4,000 troops beyond an end-of-year deadline, a senior defense official told AFP.

The proposed smaller footprint, first reported by Fox News, has been floated as a way of navigating the politically-charged talks with Baghdad, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"If you go in with 10,000, then you may get nothing. You don't want to go heavy and overplay your hand," the official said, referring to the higher training force troop numbers previously touted by senior officers.

The Obama administration's internal debate on Iraq requires the president's advisers and commanders to contemplate what tasks will be carried out by any follow-on force, and what missions might have to be jettisoned.

With the Iraqi military designed for counter-insurgency missions, US and local officers have long argued that forces will need help with logistics, intelligence, counter-terror operations, air power and naval security.

But lighter US numbers of roughly 3,000 would be too small to address what top generals have said is perhaps the most serious threat to Iraq's stability -- ethnic tensions between Kurds and Arabs in the country's oil-rich north.

"The presence of American troops on that border has diminished tensions and de-escalated a number of incidents," said John Nagl, a decorated former Army officer and president of the Center for a New American Security.

The administration is examining what tasks now performed by troops could be handed over to private contractors, but the peacekeeping mission in ethnically-mixed northern Iraq would likely not be one of them, he said.

"Probably the big mission that you can't imagine contractors doing is maintaining stability on the Kurdish-Arab border. That is probably an inherently governmental mission," said Nagl, whose think tank has had close ties with the Obama administration.

US forces deployed in the north act as mediators between Kurdish and Iraqi army units, working to prevent misunderstandings and potential violent clashes over territorial disputes.

Roughly 4,000 to 5,000 troops would be needed to carry out the "honest broker" peacekeeping role in the north, Nagl said.

Apart from the northern Iraq mission, Washington would have to turn to contractors to perform some training and logistical jobs to allow for a 3,000-strong force, he said.

"It is conceivable that you can get the troop numbers down to the 2,000 to 3,000 range if you are going to contract out an awful lot of those functions," he said.

Panetta and Pentagon spokesmen have insisted no final decision has been made on future troop numbers, but President Barack Obama has already come under criticism for mulling such a scaled-back force.

Three senators issued a statement on Tuesday saying they were "deeply troubled" at the proposal, saying it would put "hard-won" progress at risk.

"We've won there, we should not give up that victory," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon added on Wednesday.

Obama faces competing demands over Iraq, with fellow Democrats urging him to make good on his promise to end US involvement while Republicans and some military officers warn the country could unravel without enough American troops on the ground.

The administration has tried to avoid piling public pressure on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki over the sensitive issue, but the clock is ticking under the current security agreement that requires the remaining 46,000 US soldiers to withdraw by the end of year.

Given the political difficulties, the defense official said a proposed lighter footprint likely would have a greater chance of winning support both in Baghdad and Washington.

"Three to four (thousand) is probably something (Prime Minister) Maliki can sell in Iraq and it is palatable to the American public," the official said.

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