Clark's statement signals a hardening government position over the war, since it refused to back its traditional allies, the United States, Britain and Australia, in attacking Iraq without the UN backing.

Amid reports the United States had approached countries including Japan about contributing peacekeepers after the war, Clark made it clear that a similar approach to New Zealand would be rebuffed as not meeting "our definition of peacekeeping."

"We would be delighted to assist with UN peacekeeping. But at the present time it appears rather unlikely that the United Nations will be playing that role," she told reporters after a Cabinet meeting Monday.

The Guardian newspaper reported Monday that British International Development Secretary, Clare Short, returned empty-handed from Washington after efforts to win agreement about putting the United Nations in charge of reconstructing Iraq. Short was seeking agreement on a Security Council resolution that would have given the United Nations the leading role in rebuilding Iraq.

But the United States wanted the UN role confined to humanitarian assistance and was pressing ahead with plans to put are tired US general in charge, the newspaper said.

The New Zealand government has previously signaled a willingness to consider sending peacekeepers and humanitarian assistance to Iraq after the war.

But Clark suggested on Sunday that New Zealand's contribution might be limited to cash and other humanitarian aid because the United States planned its own military bureaucracy to run Iraq in the short-term.

At a press conference on Monday, she said that the Cabinet discussed the issue and agreed "our long term interest (is) best served by seeing the United Nations itself fully engaged after the end of conflict in Iraq."

And she positioned New Zealand alongside Canada and like-minded countries, saying the government had agreed to keep "closely in touch" with it and countries "in similar positions to ourselves."

So far the US embassy here has made no comments on Clark's talks, but observers expected that the talks would be greeted as provocative by the United States, which faces widespread international opposition to the war.

The New Zealand government has so far contributed 3.3 million NZ dollars (about US$1.8 million) to UN agencies and the Red Cross for emergency humanitarian relief and has pledged that it will contribute more.

(Xinhua News Agency March 25, 2003)