Washington — A top Iraqi official provided details today of an ambitious plan to revamp his country’s education system and send thousands of students to study abroad.

The $1-billion plan, in which Iraq hopes to send 10,000 students abroad next year and to rebuild its entire education system, was presented to Iraq’s Parliament this month by Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.

The Iraqi official here — Zuhair A.G. Humadi, senior adviser to Iraq’s vice president — said that Mr. Al-Maliki expected legislators to approve his proposal, known as the Iraqi Education Initiative. The money would come from revenue generated by Iraq’s vast oil reserves, he said, in an interview at the annual conference of Nafsa: Association of International Educators.

“There is broad support for putting money into the development of education,” Mr. Humadi said. Iraq’s national-security adviser, Mowaffak A. Rubaie, is at the Nafsa conference to formally announce the program today.

Under the proposal, which Mr. Humadi said would be voted on in the next two to three months, 10,000 students would be sent abroad each year for the next five years, under full scholarships, to earn associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees.

Most of the students would go to the United States, Canada, Britain, and Australia because English is the second language with which Iraqi students are most comfortable, Mr. Humadi said. Built into the scholarship program, which would pay for all academic and living expenses, would be about one semester of language training.

Mr. Humadi said Iraq needed specialists in a variety of fields, including engineering, public and business administration, law, and allied health fields. He noted that community colleges in the United States were particularly strong in allied health, and Iraq urgently needed lab technicians, nurses’ aides, and other health workers.

Because Mr. Al-Maliki wanted to improve Iraq’s elementary- and secondary-education system, including building hundreds of new schools, the initiative would also support students who sought degrees in education to help with the reforms. Mr. Humadi said the education system in Iraq needed to move away from rote memorization and toward the development of critical thinking skills.

Securing visas to the United States, however, has been a significant problem for Iraqi students. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is not set up to issue student visas, so students must travel to Syria or Jordan to get them. Many times they are stopped at the border and turned back, Iraqi education officials and students have said.

Mr. Humadi said that Mr. Rubaie was meeting with high-ranking officials in the Bush administration today to discuss the logistical problems and was optimistic that they could be solved if the officials stepped in. He said Mr. Al-Maliki would also be writing directly to President Bush about the matter.

The education initiative also would include money to rebuild Iraq’s universities, including new laboratories, Internet connections, and faculty-training programs.

Asked whether Iraq could reform its education system in the midst of a war, Mr. Humadi said the situation on the ground was not as bad as it appeared. While the security situation in higher education is “not good,” he said, it has improved in the last four to five months. —Beth McMurtrie