WASHINGTON, Jan 24: The United States has no plan to use its armed forces for implementing President Bush's agenda for extending democracy to countries l run by autocratic rulers, officials said on Monday.

Talking to reporters in Washington, senior White House officials said that in his inaugural speech last week, Mr Bush never indicated America's intention to use force for exporting its own brand of government to other places. The president "explicitly stated" that armed forces would not be Washington's first response to tyranny, said one such official.

The speech, he said, was a continuation of America's current policy of encouraging democracy wherever possible. "It's not a discontinuity, a right turn, but an acceleration, a raising of the priority," the official said.

Also on Monday, State Department's deputy spokesman Adam Ereli, while talking about restoring democracy to Iraq, said the United States does not want to give "a formula about what a democratic Iraqi government would look like". "I hesitate because defining democracy is a tricky business," he added.