Brussels, Belgium ? France’s president Tuesday ruled out sending French troops to Iraq, following India and Germany in rejecting U.S. calls for help without approval from the United Nations.

Although a few nations are sending troops, near daily guerrilla attacks — many of them deadly — and growing doubts about the basis for the war are complicating Washington’s search for peacekeepers to replace exhausted American troops in Iraq.

In Paris, President Jacques Chirac, a leading opponent of the U.S.-led war, told the Czech president that sending French soldiers to Iraq “cannot be imagined in the current context.”

He cited comments last week by his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, who said a French role was unthinkable without approval by the U.N. Security Council.

India also rejected a U.S. request for peacekeepers for Iraq, saying Monday it would consider such a move only under a U.N. mandate. And German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said last week that his country would consider sending peacekeepers only if asked by an interim Iraqi government or the United Nations.

“We are very consciously not with troops in Iraq,” German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Tuesday. “The German position about this did not change.”

The long tours of duty in Iraq are heightening the strain on both the U.S. Army and on soldiers’ families back home. On Monday, the U.S. military said thousands of troops from the 3rd Infantry Division, which helped capture Baghdad, would stay in Iraq indefinitely because of the precarious security situation.

The Bush administration has scored some success in recruiting other countries to help patrol Iraq. Poland will contribute 2,300 soldiers to a brigade that will also include units from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Lithuania.

A second brigade will have 1,640 Ukrainians and the third 1,100 Spanish troops as well as units from Honduras, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador and Nicaragua.

U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division Pfc. David Brock, 21, from Buffalo, N.Y., wipes his brow while stopped in his Humvee in Habaniyah, Iraq. The division, which spearheaded the invasion of Iraq during the war, received word this week that its tour of duty in Iraq has been extended indefinitely. France was the latest nation Tuesday to announce it would not send backup troops to assist the United States' troops.

And on Tuesday, Croatia said it plans to send in up to 60 peacekeepers. “It is in our interest to contribute to the strengthening of stability in Iraq … and to prove ourselves a serious partner and a future member of NATO,” Defense Ministry official Davor Denkovski said.

However, the decision to keep the 3rd Infantry in Iraq shows the need for even more troops from countries with well-trained and well-equipped military forces.

Even with a U.N. mandate, the decision to send soldiers to Iraq would require considerable political soul-searching for many countries because of widespread worldwide opposition to the decision to go to war.