France and the United States remained at odds about who would command a training mission, but officials said they were hopeful of a compromise, even though there was no clear evidence of where such an agreement could come from.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) agreed in principle at a summit in Istanbul last month to provide such training after the handover of powers to Baghdad from the US-led coalition.

But they left details to be hammered out, and Paris and some other countries are battling with Washington to determine exactly how the mission will be implemented, officials said.

The United States wants the mission to come under the US-led coalition force already in the country for the sake of efficiency. But France, which opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq, is against NATO becoming in any way absorbed into the coalition.

In Paris, a foreign ministry source said the question of a link between the training mission and the coalition force could be examined again in September following the report of a group of 20-30 NATO officers that France proposes to send to Baghdad in August.

A NATO official said he expected a compromise would be reached Friday and added "no decision is not an option."

Saying there had been a great deal of give and take, he added "it is our strong belief that we will need no more than one session" to decide whether to accept "a text on the table".

France had previously resisted NATO having a permanent flag in Iraq. But the key problem now seemed to have boiled down to the question of command.

"We have reached a real problem: to what degree the training mission will be merged or not into the multi-national force down the road," said a French official, adding that other countries backed that position.

"For France and five or six other countries this is a problem," he said.

The US, which has long pushed for a bigger NATO role in Iraq where American troops have been struggling to contain mounting violence, is pushing hard for an accord.

A NATO military delegation led by US admiral Gregory Johnson was dispatched to Iraq at the start of July to study options for the mission. Diplomats said a second military mission could be sent to Iraq to clarify options.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Monday that he hoped for an agreement by the end of this week on a training mission, both inside and outside Iraq.

Earlier this month Iraq's interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, part of the Iraqi administration which took over in June, urged NATO to make good quickly on its promise to train security forces.

Zebari said authorities were "in a race against the clock" in their effort to ensure stability.

Crime has soared in Iraq following the US-led invasion with convicts released by ex-leader Saddam Hussein fueling insecurity while politically-motivated kidnappings of foreign nationals soar.

Another NATO official denied Wednesday that the differences were in any way comparable to the splits which shook NATO to its foundations in the run-up to last year's US-led war against Iraq.

On that occasion France, Germany and Belgium effectively paralyzed the Alliance -- which requires unanimity for all decisions -- by refusing to allow NATO to come to Turkey's aid.

"NATO is very keen to finalize this package... but don't look for repetitions. History does not repeat itself," the official said.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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