Washington – President George W. Bush on Monday talked about Iraq and the war on terrorism with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri a week after the United States closed its Jakarta embassy, the White House said.

The United States closed its embassy in the Indonesian capital of Jakara and the consulate in Surabaya a week ago based on "credible and specific" information the facilities were at risk of terrorist attack.

At the time Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz complained the closures gave his government a bad image, leaving the impression it could not guarantee the security of US embassy personnel.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush initiated the 10-minute phone call. They spoke in the morning before Bush traveled to Iowa for the day.

"They talked about the war on terrorism, they talked briefly about Iraq ... and Saddam's defiance of the United Nations. And they talked about some bilateral issues," McClellan said.

The call came the week after Bush's appeal to the United Nations to stop Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's defiance of UN resolutions, signalling the alternative was the United States acting on its own.