The Bush administration has abandoned the idea of giving the United Nations more of a role in the occupation of Iraq as sought by India, France, and other countries as a condition for their participation in peacekeeping there, administration officials said.

Instead, the US would widen its effort to enlist other countries to assist the occupation forces in Iraq, which are dominated by the 139,000 United States troops there. In addition to American forces in Iraq, there are 21,000 troops representing 18 countries. At present, 11,000 of that number are from Britain. The US plans to seek larger numbers to help, especially with relief supplies that are coming from another dozen countries.

Administration officials told The New York Times that in spite of the difficult security situation in Iraq, there was a consensus in the administration that it would be better to work with these countries than to involve the United
Nations or countries that opposed the war and are now eager to exercise influence in a postwar Iraq.

"The administration is not willing to confront going to the Security Council and saying, 'We really need to make Iraq an international operation,' " an administration official told the Times. "You can make a case that it would be better to do that, but right now the situation in Iraq is not that dire." 

The administration's position, the Times said, could complicate its hopes of bringing a large number of American troops home in short order.

The length of the US occupation depends on how quickly the country can be stabilized and the attacks and uprisings brought under control.

The thinking on broadening international forces was disclosed on Wednesday as the US moved on a separate front at the Security Council to get a resolution passed this week that would welcome the establishment of the 25-member Governing Council set up by the United States and Britain in Iraq.
       

A meeting of potential donor countries has been scheduled for October 24 in Madrid. Some of the big European countries that wanted a more significant UN role if they sent peacekeepers are also hinting that they want the United Nations to have more of a say over reconstruction if they have to put up huge sums of money for that effort.
       

The desire for more United Nations involvement by many countries, the Times noted, echoes the debate that preceded the war. Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others were openly disdainful of getting UN authorization for the war, even after Bush had sided with Secretary of State Colin Powell to pursue that route, the newspaper recalled.
       

Rumsfeld, according to administration officials, opposes any dilution of military authority over Iraq by involving the UN, either through UN peacekeepers or indirectly in any UN authorization of forces from other countries. The Pentagon said today that he other countries that  have already sent troops to Iraq are Albania, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Ukraine.