WASHINGTON, 13 April 2003 — More than a month after they parted in anger, with a war fought and largely won in the interim, the United States and United Nations are warily circling each other. They know they will have to work together on postwar Iraq, but neither knows exactly what form that cooperation will take or wants to take the first step toward the other.

The Bush administration made a tentative move Friday, inviting UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special representative for Iraq to Washington on Monday for talks at the White House and the State and Defense departments. But senior officials said they have yet to go beyond preliminary internal discussions and talks with the British on how to obtain Security Council resolutions ranging from the necessary — the sale of Iraqi oil, for example — to the desirable — such as endorsement of the planned Iraqi Interim Authority.

“I don’t think the game is afoot yet,’’ said one official.

Deep US and British resentments remain over the Council’s failure to approve a war resolution. For their part, war opponents have tersely recognized the success of the allied military campaign and the desirability of ending Saddam Hussein’s government, while repeating their opposition to war as a method of accomplishing that end.

So far, there have been no Council discussions of the postwar issue, and all players have been left, for the most part, to analyze one another’s public statements. US and British officials said they are watching a summit meeting in St. Petersburg this weekend of the Council’s leading anti-war triumvirate — France, Germany and Russia — to see what their public approach will be. “If they behave badly, all bets are off,’’ said one official.

Many in the administration, particularly in the Defense Department, see a UN role in little but the distribution of emergency humanitarian relief in Iraq. Even in the State Department, which had pressed President Bush to seek UN backing for a war, there’s recognition that agreements will have to be reached on a range of issues, but little enthusiasm for going another round with the Council over anything having to do with Iraq. The leading voice for bringing the Council together again has been that of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who pressed Bush at their Belfast summit this week to agree to substantive UN involvement in the postwar period. Asked by Blair to come up with a more encouraging word than the administration’s official pledge of a UN “role,’’ Bush agreed to a joint statement characterizing that role as “vital.’’

That seemed to move closer to French insistence on a “central’’ UN role, but no one is certain what either word means in practice. “What is the difference between vital and central?’’ asked Nathalie Loiseau, spokeswoman for the French Embassy here. “We don’t want to be theological about it; we want to be pragmatic...For us, what is important is to have the United Nations associated with the process...’’