President Bush (news - web sites) traveled to Europe facing domestic pressure in a presidential election year to show he has allies in Iraq. But France muddied the picture by querying Bush's interpretation of deals forged at the summit.

"We are friends (of the United States), we are allies. We are not servants, of course. And when we don't agree we don't say it aggressively but we say it in a firm manner," French President Jacques Chirac told a news conference.

Chirac, a fierce critic of the Iraq war, said a deal agreed Monday on training Iraqi security forces did not entail sending NATO troops there. He said this would be "dangerous, counter-productive and misunderstood by the Iraqi people."

U.S. officials insist that the accord, agreed on the day U.S. occupying forces formally handed power to an interim Iraqi government, does mean NATO will send a mission to Iraq.

Chirac also vetoed a U.S. proposal to deploy NATO's new strike force for the Afghan elections, a move one U.S. official said had infuriated Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

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