The total cost, including debt servicing, of the US wars in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan could reach 2.4 trillion US dollars by 2017, a non-partisan estimate found Wednesday, sparking fresh political rancor.

The report by the Congressional Budget Office flared tempers two days after US President George W. Bush angered anti-war Democrats by requesting nearly 200 billion dollars more in emergency war funding. The White House brushed off the estimate as speculation, but admitted that it did not know how much the war would cost.

For the first time, the CBO estimates included the huge costs of financing government borrowing used to pay for the wars. CBO Director Peter Orszag, said the "bottom line" figure of war spending would be 2.4 trillion dollars under most intense scenarios of military activity, if future costs were not offset by higher taxes or lower spending.

"That is the highest number that is contained in our testimony, I don't know whether it is a worst case scenario," Orszag told the House of Representatives Budget Committee.

The calculations were based on estimated costs up to 2007 for military and diplomatic operations in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan and other war on so-called ''terror'' spending.

The CBO projected the total cost over the next 10 years under two scenarios, one with a sharp drawdown of US occupation troops abroad, the other under a more gradual drawdown.

The first scenario envisaged troops being deployed abroad in the so-called "war on terror" would decline to 30,000 by the beginning of the fiscal year 2010.

Under the second more intense model, US occupation troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would be drawn down to 75,000 by fiscal year 2013.

The report found that interest costs for money already borrowed for the so-called "war on terror'' between 2001 and now would reach 415 billion dollars by 2017.

A further 290 billion dollars would be added to the price of the wars, if higher end estimates of spending between now and 2017 are added, the report said.