WASHINGTON — Congress might not be able to approve the settlement in the lawsuit over Indian trust funds by year's end, as the agreement stipulates, a senator said Thursday.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said Congress might need an extension of the deadline but that he was confident the agreement would be approved.

Payments of at least $1,500 each will go to the vast majority of Native Americans participating in a long-running lawsuit against the federal government, and many will receive considerably more. That might not sound like much in the nation's capital, but for many recipients the payment will feed a family for a few months.

With that admonition, Elouise Cobell of Browning urged senators Thursday to quickly sign off on the $3.4 billion settlement that would bring a partial remedy to hundreds of thousands for the government's mismanagement of Indian trust funds.

"We are compelled to settle now by the sobering reality that our class grows smaller each year, each month and every day," said Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe and the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in June 1996. "We also face the uncomfortable but unavoidable fact that a large number of individual Indian trust beneficiaries are among the most vulnerable people in this country, existing in sheer poverty."

The Interior Department manages about 56 million acres of land. It leases the land for mining, grazing and oil and gas production. It also collects money from those leases and distributes it to more than 384,000 individual Indian accounts and about 2,700 tribal accounts.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs said the government had breached its responsibility to manage assets belonging to Indians and that it refused to fix a flawed accounting system that led to billions of dollars being lost without explanation.

Dorgan, chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, used harsher language, saying the government "bilked" many trust account holders.

"I support the decision" to settle the suit, Dorgan told Cobell. "I think it was a wise choice. It will bring substantial benefit to those who have been injured."

 On Thursday, the Indian Affairs Committee held the first hearing on the settlement since it was announced last week. Under terms of the settlement, a fund totaling $1.4 billion will compensate participants for past accounting problems and resolve potential claims that assets were mismanaged. Legal fees also will be paid out through the $1.4 billion fund.