Gunmen seriously wounded a leading woman member of Iraq's Governing Council Saturday, as Europe's three biggest powers failed to resolve their rift over Iraq and its future six months after the war began.

They disagreed on how fast power should be handed back to Iraqis by the United States, which tried again to put the bitter pre-war debate aside as it seeks international help to rebuild and stabilize the country.

Officials said U.S. President Bush would issue a "call to action" at the U.N. General Assembly next week, urging members to back a new resolution to share the financial and military burden of Iraqi reconstruction.

In the latest in a string of attacks on Iraqis cooperating with the country's occupying powers, attackers in Baghdad fired on a car carrying Akila al-Hashemi, a Shi'ite Muslim career diplomat. She was hit in the abdomen.

Some Iraqis have denounced the 25-member Governing Council for cooperating with the U.S.-led administration in overall charge of the country since the war that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Hashemi, who served in Iraq's Foreign Ministry during Saddam's rule, had been due to travel to New York with Iraqi delegates attending the General Assembly meeting.

Leaders of Britain, principal backer of the United States in the war, and Germany and France, main European opponents of the war that began on March 20, met in Berlin in an effort to overcome their differences over the conflict and its aftermath.

But divisions remain.

"Our views are not quite convergent," French President Jacques Chirac told reporters after meeting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

STRONGER U.N. ROLE

Chirac and Schroeder want a much stronger United Nations role and a faster transition to democracy in Iraq.

"It's important to give the United Nations a bigger role," Schroeder said. "On the technicalities and timetable, we are still not fully agreed," Chirac said.

He restated France's position that Iraq must regain sovereignty within months. Secretary of State Colin Powell has ridiculed the notion that power could be handed back overnight.

Blair, in contrast, stressed the leaders' common ground.

"We all want to see Iraq make a transition to democratic government as swiftly as possible. We all want to see, and know there must be, a key role for the United Nations," he said.

The United States, whose 130,000 troops in Iraq suffer almost daily casualties from guerrilla attacks, is seeking a new U.N. Security Council resolution to pave the way for more countries to send troops to Iraq.

Russia's Vladimir Putin, who also opposed the war, said on Saturday he would not send Russian troops to the country.

"In a practical sense, there is no question of sending troops to Iraq, and we are not even considering this matter," the president was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Putin, who meets Bush at Camp David on September 26 and 27, reiterated his demand for a move back to Iraqi sovereignty.

DONOR MONEY

Washington also wants to spread the cost of rebuilding Iraq.

Iraq's battered economy needs more donor money, with one estimate as high as $70 billion over three to four years, Trade Minister Ali Allawi, in the Gulf state for an IMF/World Bank meeting, said Saturday.

Bush, under pressure at home about rising costs in Iraq, will lump his appeal for assistance for Iraq together with efforts to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction, fight AIDS and people trafficking, senior administration officials said. He will also ask for help in Afghanistan.

"It really is an opportunity to say to the international community: We have real challenges, we can't ignore them, we have to meet them. It's a call to action," said one official.

In Baghdad, Iraq's U.S. governor Paul Bremer condemned the attack on Hashemi, which also wounded three bodyguards, as "an attack against the people of Iraq."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the shooting would harm Iraq's political process.

"...the early establishment of a broad-based and representative government in Iraq, to which sovereignty can be transferred, requires an inclusive political process. Violence such as the murderous attack on Dr al-Hashemi only retards that process and that goal," he said in a statement.

The gunmen struck near Hashemi's home in western Baghdad. Her car veered off the road, witnesses said. Bullet holes scarred a tree and bloodstains spattered the roadside.

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