WARSAW -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied on Wednesday that he had snubbed his German counterpart during a NATO ministers' meeting, but acknowledged a rift over the German election campaign which exposed differences over Iraq would take time to heal.

"No, I did not intentionally snub anyone, that's not my way," Rumsfeld told a news conference when asked why he had left a ministerial dinner late on Tuesday before the German minister had spoken.

"There was no snubbing in the meeting from anybody...that was visible," a visibly irritated Rumsfeld said.

He explained he had left the dinner because it had run overtime and he had been working full-out from early in the day.

On Monday, on the eve of the two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Polish capital, Rumsfeld had hit out at German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose Social Democratic Party's winning campaign featured blunt opposition to U.S. military action against Iraq.

One of Schroeder's former ministers also caused a storm when she compared U.S. President George W. Bush's tactics to those of Hitler.

Rumsfeld, however, admitted that the spat would take time to resolve, saying it: "Will iron itself out in the days and weeks and months ahead".

On Tuesday German Defense Minister Peter Struck said he was confident relations could be patched up with Washington, and said he had "shaken the hand" of Rumsfeld at the beginning of the meeting.

He immediately offered an olive branch, proposing to jointly take command with the Netherlands of the International Security Force in Afghanistan from early next year.

The U.S. rift with Germany underscored the difficulties Rumsfeld faced at the meeting as he attempted to gain greater understanding, if not outright support, from allied governments as Washington heads into a showdown with Iraq.

The German government has been outright in its opposition to the idea of a military strike on Iraq.