Robert Blake, charge d' affaires of the US embassy here, called on Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal and was understood to have raised the issue of Indian troops for Iraq during the meeting.

US embassy officials, however, described Wednesday's meeting as "routine."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher expressed the hope that India would contribute troops to Iraq if a "satisfactory" UN mandate emerged from the current discussions at the world body.

"It's important to remember that countries will get involved in this because they care about the region, because they care about the Iraqi people, because they think it's good for them to have a more stable region, particularly in a neighbourhood that India is quite close to," he said.

"And we would certainly hope that India would find its possible to make a contribution to stability in an area that is very important to India," he added.

Christina Rocca, assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, is expected to discuss the subject with senior Indian officials during her visit to Delhi next week.

Rocca would be spending five days here from Tuesday, during which she would hold talks with her counterpart Jayant Prasad, joint secretary (Americas) in the external affairs ministry, and other officials, diplomatic sources said.

"She is coming because she is the State Department's pointperson for South Asia," a diplomatic source said, adding apart from meeting Indian officials Rocca would also be holding internal meetings with officials of the embassy.

Iraq would naturally figure in the talks because that was at the moment at the top of Washington's concerns, though Rocca was not coming only to discuss Indian troops for Iraq, the source said.

Rocca, who usually visits other countries of the region during her visits, is only visiting India this time. Her visit will coincide with that of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, though the US embassy said the two visits were not connected.

There has been speculation here that Sharon would also use Israel's growing ties with India to back Washington's request for Indian troops to Iraq.

The US has indicated that it is ready to consider a larger role for the international community in Iraq in the wake of the bombing of the UN offices in Baghdad that killed UN special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and of the holiest Shia shrine in Najaf that claimed the lives of a leading cleric and 90 others.

Indian officials, however, said that there was no change in New Delhi's decision as enunciated by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) at its July 14 meeting.