The 277-139 vote was nonbinding, but it highlighted a restiveness over Bush's insistence that U.S. rebuilding aid to Iraq be a grant, not a loan. House-Senate bargainers hope to produce a compromise $87 billion package for Iraq and Afghanistan next week, and GOP leaders in both chambers say they intend to drop Senate-passed language making half the rebuilding aid a loan.

The vote came the same day the White House threatened for the first time to veto the overall bill if the loan language survives.

By underscoring Bush's opposition to loans, the veto threat could make it easier for congressional Republican leaders to nail down enough votes to help the president prevail.

The meaning of Tuesday's House roll call was muddled and contested by members of the two parties. In a single roll call lawmakers voiced their views on controversial Iraqi rebuilding loans and on widely popular enhancements of military health care coverage.

"I've made it very, very clear I have no intention" of including a loan in the final bill, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., the chief House author of the bill, said after the vote.

Young said that because of the pressure many lawmakers feel to vote for improved benefits for U.S. troops and veterans, GOP leaders did not try coercing them to back Bush's position in Tuesday's vote.

"I made it very clear members should vote as they felt," Young said.

Democrats took a different view.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the roll call "a full-blown rebuff to the administration."

Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top Democrat on the House Appropriations panel, said the vote was fueled by lawmakers' lingering resentment of Bush's tone in a meeting last week with senators, when he said he would not negotiate over Iraqi loans.

"Let's be frank about it. The reason it got a lot of votes was it was simply too hot for the Republican leadership to handle," Obey said.

Technically, the resolution approved on Tuesday urged House bargainers on the Iraq-Afghanistan bill to accept Senate-approved provisions on Iraqi loans and on better military and veterans medical coverage. The House version of that bill lacked that language.

Voting for Tuesday's resolution were 84 Republicans, 192 Democrats and an independent. Two Democrats and 137 Republicans voted no.

The House bill included $18.6 to help Iraq rebuild its water supplies, health clinics and Army, and made the money a grant that country would not have to repay.

The Senate included $18.4 billion but would require Iraq to repay about half - unless Saudi Arabia, Russia and other countries forgave 90 percent of the debt Baghdad ran up under Saddam Hussein's regime.

Bush and other administration officials have repeatedly expressed their opposition to loans. But a letter to congressional leaders by White House budget director Joshua Bolten marked the first veto threat.

"If this provision is not removed, the president's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill," Bolten wrote.

"Including a loan mechanism slows efforts to stabilize the region and to relieve pressure on our troops, raises questions about our commitment to building a democratic and self-governing Iraq, and impairs our ability to encourage other nations to provide badly needed assistance without saddling Iraq with additional debt," the letter said.

Loan supporters say that with some of the world's richest oil reserves, Iraq should be required to eventually repay some U.S. aid. That is especially true with the United States facing record federal deficits, and many lawmakers hearing requests from their home districts for more funds for local projects.

"It is troubling that the Administration is willing to jeopardize these funds over a dispute over the loan - especially when the vast majority of the American people support the loan," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.