"There's no preoccupation" with Iran, Bush said in an interview with a French television ahead of his trip to Europe and the Middle East, starting with Poland and Saint Petersburg, adding, however, that he was concerned that operatives of the al-Qa’eda network were present in Iran.

"Any of the al-Qa’eda terrorist network in Iran should be arrested and handed over to authorities in their home countries", Bush told the Television, as the Administration cancelled sine die a high-level meeting on Iran, which was scheduled for last Tuesday, with British officials attending.

U.S. officials said the administration had not rescheduled a high-level policy meeting on Iran put off earlier this week.

"This high-level policy review is not going to happen. Things have been indefinitely put off", said a government official familiar with the debate.

Time pressures ahead of Bush's departure on Friday were partly responsible for the scrapped meeting, the official said.

"Iran is probably one of the few issues where the US and UK held opposing views, and places London closer to its European partners, mostly Germany, than Washington", one British analyst observed.

"The issue of Iran would certainly be debated at the Evian meeting of the G-8, but not in a conflicting way", said Patrick Seale, an independent journalist specialising on the Middle East, particularly Syrian affairs, adding: "don’t forget that this is a so-called reconciliation and unity meeting, not one of confrontation".

Iran denies nuclear weapons ambitions and on Iraq, it says supporting the establishment of a democratic government in Baghdad based on free elections.

U.S. officials have said intelligence suggests senior al-Qa’eda members hiding in Iran may have had a hand in the May 12 bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 24 peoples, including eight Americans.

Though Iran has admitted to the arrest of some 500 alleged terrorists, some of them al-Qa’eda operatives, but the White House say the measure fell short of U.S. demands.

"I think this fight will keep going for some time", he said.

Asked by a radio whether the Washington was gearing up for war with Iran, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Administration's most radical figure on getting tough with the Islamic Republic said, "not to my knowledge".

In the interview with "Infinity", Rumsfeld accused Tehran of broadcasting radio and television programs and infiltrating agents inside Iraq "trying to stir up people in Iraq to oppose the coalition".

Analysts said the State Department and National Security Council were cautious about pushing too hard on Iran; arguing that continued fledgling contact on issues including Afghanistan and Iraq may yield broader cooperation, referring to contacts between the two sides arranged by the United Nations in Geneva, contacts that Iranians said were not concerned with resuming relations.