UNITED NATIONS - The United States accused advocacy groups of trying to use a landmark U.N. effort to achieve equality for women to promote a pro-abortion agenda, embroiling a high-level meeting in a debate participants had hoped to avoid.

Human rights and women's groups have voiced concern the Bush administration is rolling back on U.S. support for the platform of action adopted at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing.

But U.S. Ambassador Ellen Sauerbrey, speaking Monday as a two-week review of the 150-page document got under way, said the United States is not seeking "in any way" to reopen negotiations on the platform.

What Washington wants, she said, is an amendment to the meeting's proposed final declaration stating that the commitment to "reproductive health services" is not a guarantee of the right to abortion.

"Our amendment addresses the issue of what we believe to be the internationally agreed definition of reproductive health services, which is used in Beijing," Sauerbrey said.

"Countries around the world, when this issue comes up, have said that 'we do not consider that reproductive services means abortion.'"

The United States is concerned that non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, "are attempting to assert that Beijing in some way creates, or contributes to the creation of an internationally recognized fundamental right to abortion."

Although many countries made clear in 1995 that reproductive health services did not include abortion, Sauerbrey said, "it keeps coming up, largely driven by NGOs that are really, I believe, trying to hijack the term."

The proposed U.S. amendment, coming to the forefront in behind-the-scenes discussions, has disappointed the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, which organized the meeting.

The panel had hoped to avoid the controversy over abortion and focus on roadblocks to women's equality in areas such as education, employment political participation and inheritance rights.

Sauerbrey refused to identify the organizations promoting an international right to abortion. But Kyung-wha Kang, who chairs the commission and presided at Monday's meeting, said the Beijing platform is a policy document - not a legally binding treaty.