Washington ? President Bush received low-interest loans in the 1980s from a Texas oil company where he was a director, a practice he asked companies to end as part of his proposal to discourage corporate wrongdoing.

The loans from Harken Energy Corp. were for $96,000 in 1986 for 80,000 of the company’s shares, and $84,375 in 1988 for 25,000 shares, the White House told The New York Times and The Washington Post.

On Tuesday, Bush told a Wall Street audience he wanted to halt such deals. “I challenge compensation committees to put an end to all company loans to corporate officers,” he said.

According to Harken records filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, loans to Bush and other directors carried a 5 percent annual interest rate. Harken didn’t require Bush to repay the principal for eight years, according to the Harken records at the SEC.

Bush eventually retired the debt by trading 105,000 shares being held as collateral, White House spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Times and the Post. In return, Bush received options for 42,503 shares that he never exercised, Bartlett said.

Bartlett told the newspapers the loans were totally appropriate, saying such deals were a common practice to encourage investment but had recently been abused.

Reached at home Wednesday night by The Associated Press, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer refused to elaborate on the reports.

Bush’s business dealings as a Harken director have dogged him for years and generated fresh interest as corporate scandals mount. Bush has talked about creating a new climate of ethical behavior as worried investors sell and stock prices plunge.

Bush was a member of Harken’s board when it reported a profit on the company-financed sale of a subsidiary to a group of Harken insiders. The SEC forced the company to amend its books to reflect millions of dollars in losses that had been hidden by the accounting practice.

Bush was the subject of a separate insider stock trade investigation. The SEC took no action against Bush in that inquiry.

The SEC has released some records on its insider trading probe of Bush, but has withheld others. The White House is declining to authorize the SEC to release all documents from the investigation of Bush.