Washington ? The Bush administration has launched a new bid at the United Nations to boost international reconstruction aid and peacekeeping troops for Iraq.

The United States over the weekend circulated to the U.N. Security Council’s 15 members a new draft resolution that would give the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council until Dec. 15 to develop a timetable for writing a new constitution and holding elections.

But the resolution stopped short of setting a date for the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty and did not meet other countries’ demand that the United Nations be given a central role in developing a new constitution or organizing polls.

The text of the draft resolution, the third put forward by the United States since August, was posted Monday on the Web site of Xinhua, the state-run Chinese news agency. Britain and Spain were expected to co-sponsor the resolution.

U.S. officials confirmed the contents of the draft resolution but declined to release a copy. They said the document could be formally introduced as early as today.

The draft represents a fresh attempt by the Bush administration to satisfy the concerns of France, Russia, China and other countries that have detained Security Council approval of a resolution on a peacekeeping force and reconstruction assistance to Iraq.

The resolution says the Iraqi Governing Council and its ministers would be “the principal bodies of the Iraqi interim administration, which will embody the sovereignty of the state of Iraq during transitional period.”

A second U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new language was designed to assuage demands for a concrete date for the restoration of sovereignty.

“We cannot predict the future,” he said.