Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice are to convene a meeting at the White House on Thursday in an effort to decide whether France should be punished for its anti-war stance, they said.

France's President Jacques Chirac and Bush held their first conversation since the war started on Tuesday. The White House said the talks were "businesslike".

The officials said it was unlikely any agreement would be reached and stressed that even if a consensus is forged it would still be up to Bush to decide on the course of future policy, the officials told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Debate has broken down along the lines of most Washington power struggles with hawks at the Pentagon favoring a harsh line against the French and doves at the State Department arguing for a more restrained approach, the officials said.

"We're looking at how we are going to interact with France after what has happened in the past couple of months," one official said.

"It should be no suprise that there are different points of view within different departments and they are going to be hashed out," the official added.

Defense Department hawks, led by Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and influential advisor Richard Perle have suggested limiting France's military role in NATO and its participation in Iraqi reconstruction projects, the officials said.

Two of the three have said as much in public.

Wolfowitz told US lawmakers on Thursday that France "pay some consequences" for its opposition to the war in Iraq, particularly its veto of NATO support for Turkey. Perle echoed those remarks in an interview with a French newspaper.

Proposals for doing this include bypassing the North Atlantic Council, NATO's traditional governing body, and relying more on the alliance's Defense Planning Committee from which France withdrew in 1966, the officials said.

The State Department, meanwhile, wants to move beyond the Iraq split and focus more on areas of future cooperation with France, including in Iraq and is vehemently opposed to any steps against Paris at NATO, the officials said.

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