Bush will discuss with them specific roles a NATO contingent could take on, ranging from training Iraqi security forces to protecting U.N. personnel in the strife-torn country, which is due to regain its sovereignty next week.

The president's goal is to forge an agreement at the NATO summit in Istanbul next Monday and Tuesday. The alliance would assist but not overshadow the U.S.-led coalition, said a senior U.S. official on condition of anonymity.

Some 138,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, along with far smaller units from 31 other countries, including 16 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who opposed the war, have refused to contribute peacekeeping troops to Iraq.

But France apparently is willing to provide training, and Germany has sent about 6,500 NATO-led security forces to Afghanistan.

The issue of training is something NATO will be grappling with at the summit, a second senior U.S. official said. While some of the training could be done outside Iraq, much of it needs to be done within the country, he said on condition of anonymity.

The Iraqis are appealing for technical assistance and training and all NATO allies should do what they can as an alliance to respond to their request, the official said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has been laying the groundwork for a NATO force in Iraq in talks over the last few weeks with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the U.S. official said.

A senior Democratic senator, Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, urged Bush to present the allied leaders with a plan at the summit.

Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who was in Baghdad last week for talks with U.S. and Iraqi officials, said a NATO force could take on one of three roles - protecting Iraq's borders, supplementing Polish troops in the South or guarding U.N. personnel from attack.

But Biden said the Bush administration has "not been getting it right from the beginning" in Iraq and that Powell should prepare a plan for Bush to present in Istanbul.

On Monday, Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, wrote allied governments asking for training and other technical assistance, but not troops.

NATO spokesman James Appathurai said leaders would discuss the request.

At the swearing in of John D. Negroponte as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Powell implied anew that there may be additions to the U.S.-led coalition.

"Dozens of nations have contributed to and sacrificed for the sake of a new and free Iraq," Powell said. "And those contributions will continue. I know that the Iraqi people will welcome new partners."

And, in an interview on the Glenn Beck Program that is carried by 160 radio stations, Powell said Iraqis were not ready to take care of their security. "If we could get more forces that would be fine," he said.

Negroponte, in a brief speech, said his mission was to help Iraq defeat terrorists and "criminal elements who oppose a free Iraq" and to promote economic development and democracy.

The seasoned ambassador - Baghdad will be his fifth post, including his most recent assignment as the U.S. representative at the United Nations - said, "The United States needs partners to advance our values and interests in the world."

Earlier, Negroponte, appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," said the purpose of U.S. programs was "to enable, to empower the Iraqis to take more and more responsibility."

"Even those who might have qualms about how we got into the situation in Iraq would agree that we have to have a solid plan going forward, that we can't just up and leave and leave the country in chaos," he said.

Meanwhile, Bush telephoned Allawi to "reiterate his commitment to the Iraqi people," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

A recording purportedly made by the mastermind of bombings and beheadings in Iraq threatened to kill Allawi and fight Americans "until Islamic rule is back on Earth." The audio, found Wednesday on an Islamic Web site, is supposedly from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born terrorist.

Speaking aboard Air Force One as Bush flew to Philadelphia, McClellan said the president "is determined to confront these terrorist threats."

Biden, who traveled to Iraq with Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Bush was planning to "pull back" in Iraq after sovereignty is returned to Iraqis June 30 and that this would create a vacuum that Iraqi security forces are incapable of filling.

"I think it is a political decision, and I think it is a mistake," Biden said.

He said there were comparable U.S. buildups in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.

"We have got to get serious about it," he said. "We are playing into the hands of the insurgents." But, Biden said, the Pentagon wants to get U.S. troops "out of harm's way" and the administration "seems to be internally paralyzed."

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