The partners -- the European Union, the United States, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and Canada -- were unable at a meeting near Washington last weekend to choose between the two leading contenders for the experiment, Cadarache in south-east France and Rokkasho-Mura in northern Japan.

"We are giving ourselves a month of complementary work to come up with a proposal for cooperation," said France's junior research minister, Claudie Haignere.

The Iter project aims to provide the know-how to build electricity-generating power stations that would tap the energy of the stars by confining plasma at enormous temperatures with some of the most powerful magnets ever built. Plasma has some of the qualities of a gas, but conducts electricity and responds to magnetism.

Basic concepts of the design already have been tested in lower-powered machines known as Tokamaks.

Iter will cost an estimated 10 billion dollars (eight billion euros) to build, operate and decommission.

The United States opted out of the project from 1999 until this year, but is now backing the Japanese bid along with South Korea. But Russia and China say the experiment should be built in France. Government ministers will meet again in February in an attempt to remove the impasse.

"We remain convinced that Cadarache offers the best guarantees," Haignere said.

Nevertheless, she said member countries had accepted a Russian proposal to lengthen the decision process, while making full use of the competence and expertise of each of the partners.

A source close to the negotiations said that if the work is spread out in this way, the European Union and Japan, which have poured in the most financial effort, would need to be compensated in some way, not necessarily financially.

While the gigantic fusion machine will have to be built somewhere, there is still plenty of scope to share out the preparatory work and the calculations that will be needed to underpin the experiment, the source said.

The dispute is to a great extent a political and economic row between the United States and the European Union in which science takes a back seat, according to analysts.

The failure of the talks in the United States makes other partners reluctant to return there for the next ministers' meeting, which instead will likely be held on neutral ground -- probably in Vienna, headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Even if the political and economic complexities can be worked out in the next five weeks, it will be many years before the experiment moves to a practical stage.

The idea is to set up an international Iter organization by late 2004, with experiments slated to begin 10 years later and continue for 20 years. If successful, the Iter project could lead the way to an inexhaustible supply of energy from heavy hydrogen atoms found in ordinary sea water, scientists say.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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