Despite the first phone call in two months between Bush and French President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday that Washington described as "businesslike," the president's aides, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are expected to meet on Thursday, they said.

National security advisor Condoleezza Rice, who is now traveling with Bush, may join the so-called "principals meeting" at the White House by teleconference in an effort to decide whether France should be punished for its anti-war stance, the officials told AFP on condition of anonymity.

However, they said it was unlikely any final 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.

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 restraint, 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 should "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 split over Iraq 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.

"Trying to find ways to institutionally limit the French is majorly stupid," said one senior US diplomat. "Instead of trying to find relationships and new methods to exclude them, we should be looking for things to agree on."

The divisions were borne out by the US ambassador to France, Howard Leach, who took Wolfowitz and Perle to task for their remarks.

"Mr Perle is not in the United States government," Leach told French television in an interview on Saturday.

"He is a private citizen who does not speak on behalf of the American administration, and I hope we will not pay attention to what he says, and that the French won't listen to him," the envoy said.

Wolfowitz, Leach said, was mainly concerned with ending the war on Iraq and was speaking only for the Pentagon.

US officials said the State Department position had been buoyed in recent days by Bush's telephone conversation with Chirac.

The officials also noted that Powell and his French counterpart Dominique de Villepin had spoken twice in the past three days, seeking ways to ease the tension.

"These phone calls ... suggest to us that the French are seeking a useful role and the best way for us to deal with them is to see what it is we can do cooperatively, not divisively," a State Department official said.

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