The United States may deploy 1,500 or 2,000 troops in violence-ravaged Haiti, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday.

Asked at a press conference how many US troops would be deployed in Haiti, Rumsfeld said that "for the sake of argument" the number would be 1,500 or 2,000 or less.

"I don't know what the number will be," he said, "but time willtell."

He said a multinational force, which was now in the hundreds, was growing, and estimated the entire force to be "less than 5,000."

The troops would stay in Haiti for a "relatively short period,"said Rumsfeld, without specifying how long.

Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon would discuss on later Monday whether to send US warshipsto waters off Haiti.

"We'll be discussing that with the secretary later today," he said.

The first batch of several hundred US Marines arrived in Port-Au-Prince, the Haitian capital, on Sunday night, and the Pentagon has said it was considering sending three warships to sit off Haiti's coast as a precautionary measure.