The officials briefed reporters a day after US President George W. Bush called in his annual State of the Union speech for enhancing the teaching of math and science in US schools and for sharply increasing scientific research.

In his speech, Bush warned that the United States "cannot be complacent" and warned that "we are seeing new competitors, like China and India, and this creates uncertainty, which makes it easier to feed people's fears."

But "this is not about going up against China and India," said John Marburger, the director of the White House's office of science and technology policy. "This is about leading the world."

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said that job creation had been "one of the greatest areas of concern" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, but painted an upbeat picture of employment in the United States.

"Our country is leading the way among major industrialized nations in terms of job creation. Germany and France have permanent unemployment rates in excess of 10 percent. And job creation in Europe has basically been stagnant over the last 10 years," she said.

Amid concerns in the US public and the media about Chinese economic growth and the so-called outsourcing of jobs to India, Marburger insisted that: "We're not responding to a threat, we're maintaining a leadership role."

"I believe the strength of this nation is such that all other countries are trying to do it the way we do it, and the only way that we can maintain our leadership role is to do it better," he said.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Bush's proposals, if enacted, would bring about "a renaissance for United States science and global competitiveness" helped in part by government-funded laboratories.

"We have helped contribute to America's leadership in the key scientific fields that have dominated the last century and that we believe will dominate the century that has just started," he said.

"In this new century, those are the fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology, material science and high-speed computation," said Bodman.

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