A joint French-German and a separate Russian proposal, obtained by AFP, were given to the United States ahead of an urgent meeting on Iraq's future with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in Geneva on Saturday.

It was unclear if the United States would accept the measures, which would largely hand supervision of the emerging political process to the United Nations while US commanders would maintain military and security control.

The amendments, suggested changes to a draft US resolution now circulating at the UN Security Council, would speed up the process to give Iraqis sovereignty and establish a constitution and future elections.

Wary of the bitter split at the Council over the Iraq war, Annan will try to get the five permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States to hammer out a consensus on at the least the outline of what comes next.

"We think that all Council members do share, essentially, the same objective," US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters on Wednesday.

"The differences in the Council, we think, should relate to the steps that need to be taken to get there."

US officials have been calling for Iraqis to have greater control of their destiny but the proposed amendments would accelerate that process and inevitably limit the role of the current US civilian administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.

The French and German amendments say the United Nations should take the lead in "immediately" beginning new procedures to pave the way to "the full restoration of Iraqi sovereignty."

The Russian text calls for the world body to "strengthen its role in Iraq" and, like the French-German proposal, calls for the creation of a timetable for when the United States would hand the nation back to Iraq.

At the same time, both amendments broadly back the US call for a multinational force in Iraq, where deadly attacks like last month's bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad have been on the rise.

The United States appealed for UN help in the face of the bloodshed despite previously launching the war to topple Saddam Hussein without the approval of the world body.

The draft US resolution is seen as one of the first major tests of whether the acrimony over the war has eased and Annan said this week that it was imperative for the Council to get past the earlier dispute and move on.

"Everyone wants this to work," one diplomat said.

The US proposal seeks UN authorisation for the multinational force requested by countries like India, Pakistan and Turkey, which have indicated they could not send troops to help keep the peace in Iraq without it.

US President George W. Bush on Wednesday said stability and peace in Iraq were "in the world's interest" and urged nations "not get caught up in past bickering."

At the State Department, spokesman Boucher said Secretary of State Colin Powell had a "good and constructive exchange" with Russia over Moscow's proposals.

But he stressed that proposals aiming to improve the US draft had to be based on the "reality" of post-war Iraq.

"You can't pretend a war never happened. You can't pretend the coalition never happened," he said.