WASHINGTON -- President Bush yesterday won no support from Russian President Vladimir Putin in his bid to bring Iran before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions and acknowledged that he has not yet forged an international consensus on how to deal with Tehran's alleged nuclear program.

After a White House meeting, Bush and Putin emerged to reaffirm their friendship and emphasize that they both oppose Iran's obtaining nuclear weapons. But Putin offered no backing for the tougher approach favored by Bush to bring the weight of the United Nations to bear, and instead called for more diplomacy with Iran's new leadership.

"The potential of diplomatic solutions to all these issues is far from exhausted," Putin said at a joint appearance with Bush in the White House East Room a day after meeting new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "And we will undertake all steps necessary to settle all these problems and issues, not aggravate them. ... We do not want our careless actions to lead to the development of events along the North Korean variant."

By that, Putin meant the heretofore-fruitless attempts to force Pyongyang to give up its weapons program -- one that the North Koreans now say has yielded several nuclear bombs. North Korea has been brought before the Security Council in the past, only to have China block action against it.

Now, North Korea has abandoned the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty altogether as it pursues its weapons development, and six-party talks involving the United States in Beijing are stalemated.

Bush administration officials had hoped to win enough support for a vote Monday by the International Atomic Energy Agency to send the Iran case to the Security Council. European powers support such a move after their own negotiations with Tehran failed to produce agreement.

But China's President Hu Jintao, like Putin, declined to back such a move during a meeting with Bush in New York earlier this week, and without Russia and China, which are both veto-wielding Security Council members, U.S. and European diplomats fear that a referral vote might be meaningless.

Bush signaled that, in hopes of building more support, he might wait past Monday to seek such a referral. "I am confident that the world will see to it that Iran goes to the U.N. Security Council if it does not live up to its agreements," he said. "And when that referral will happen is a matter of diplomacy."

Putin, whose government is helping Iran build a civilian nuclear plant despite U.S. objections, said Ahmadinejad assured him in their meeting Thursday in New York that Iran does not want nuclear weapons. "We, of course, are against Iran becoming a nuclear power," Putin said.

Putin's meeting with Bush covered a range of other issues, including terrorism, energy and the fate of the former Soviet republics. But it appeared to be a more workmanlike session than past meetings, when the issue of Russia's faltering democracy produced fireworks.