PARIS, May 3 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - France and Germany expressed their reservations over the U.S. plans to form a stabilization force with their exclusion Saturday, May 3, as it seems to be a punishment for their staunch anti-war opposition.

"A lot of countries who were interested in joining the planned force expressed their concern about having a legal framework, specifically about clearly marking out the role of the United Nations so they could really take part, or consider doing so."

A senior U.S. official said there was a consensus in Washington that the U.N. role should be restricted to "what it does best" - humanitarian affairs, dealing with refugees and internally displaced people, and reconstruction.

"For the moment the aim is only to expand what the British and the Americans are already doing on the ground. Let's wait to see how things work out in practice," said De Villepin.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer also said his country knew about the plans, decided at a conference in London Wednesday, April 30, and which had escaped major attention until announcement of it in Washington Friday, May 2.

"It was clear that... a few EU states other than the UK were involved in it or at least made clear that they were participating with troops or troops and humanitarian aid," he said.

The American official said that the United States and its war allies were forming a stabilization force, dividing Iraq into three sectors to be commanded by the United States, Britain and Poland.

"The thought is the force would be generated by a coalition of the willing on a bilateral basis," said the official.

The "coalition of the willing" is the name given by the United States to the countries which expressed support for its invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The statement was taken to mean that the United Nations, which refused to approve the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, would not be consulted.

The U.S., Britain, Poland, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Bulgaria have reportedly offered troops for the force. Albania already has an infantry company in Iraq. The Philippines, Qatar, Australia and South Korea offered aid but not troops.

The American official said no U.N. mandate would be sought for the force, but if some countries felt they needed a NATO umbrella to participate it would be taken up in the alliance's defense planning committee. France is not a member of the committee and so could not use its veto.

Although a spokesman for British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who was attending the EU talks in Greece, said no final decision had so far been made yet on the plan, the British defence ministry in London announced that British forces would be in charge of south-eastern Iraq, where they are currently deployed.

British Defence Minister Geoff Hoon set the plan for a "multinational stabilization force" for Iraq in motion at a meeting in London Wednesday of 16 countries _ Britain, the United States, 10 other NATO members and four non-NATO states.

France, Germany and Russia, staunch opponents of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, were not invited to the London meeting, named "Initial Coalition Stabilization Operations Conference."

Portuguese Foreign Minister Antonio Martins da Cruz, also at the EU talks, said a second meeting of participating countries would be held in London, probably on May 8 or 9.

In the meanwhile, the European Union played down on the risk of a new split in the 15-member bloc over reported U.S.-led plans for the multinational force.

"We have in no way felt this as an issue to divide us," Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said, after the EU meeting.

"Our overriding concern should be what we can do now for Iraq. At the same time, we must prepare for later involvement as and when political and legal conditions permit," he said.

Also Saturday, Poland's foreign minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said the force would be deployed by the end of May.

"The idea is to have all the countries, ready to engage, there by the end of this month," he said on the sidelines of a European Union foreign ministers meeting in Greece. He added that Poland would have an "important" role in the force.

Cimoszewicz’s statements came as his President Aleksander Kwasniewski said that Poland plans to send at least 1,500 troops to Iraq to help administer one of three sectors of the war-battered country mentioned in the plan.