United Nations ? President Bush came home empty-handed Wednesday from his two-day push at the United Nations to begin getting foreign troops and financial help in Iraq.

White House officials started lowering expectations that a U.N. resolution to encourage other nations to donate military and monetary help was on the horizon. A senior administration official indicated that it could be months before a resolution is passed and international help is on the way, if ever.

But a senior State Department official said the administration was not deliberately slowing down its resolution efforts. “I wouldn’t predict how long that process would take,” he said. “We’re not slowing down to any artificial timetable. We do want to do it right.”

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reinforced Bush’s downscaled expectations Wednesday, saying he didn’t expect much help from other countries.

“We’re not going to get a lot of international troops, with or without a U.N. resolution,” he said in Senate testimony. “I think somewhere between zero and 10,000 or 15,000 is probably the ballpark. It’s not going to change the drill dramatically.”

The failure to secure foreign help in Iraq comes as polls show growing concern among the public and lawmakers of both parties in Congress that the U.S.-led effort to pacify and rebuild Iraq costs too much, kills too many U.S. soldiers and may be inflaming terrorists more than defusing them.

One day after Bush spoke to the General Assembly, calling on the world to lend the United States a hand in Iraq, senior administration officials said the president, in a series of meetings with world leaders, didn’t ask for specific assistance.

“The president didn’t come here to ask people for troops,” said a senior administration official spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The president came here to lay out a call to the international community to join together in whatever way people can in supporting reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, and in building a stable Iraq.”

Bush’s call went unanswered.

In one of the few encouraging signs for U.S. officials, Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder agreed to put past differences behind them. But Schroeder’s offer to help train Iraqi police and military personnel fell far short of Bush’s goals.