The United States will not pay US$34 million it earmarked for a U.N. family planning programs overseas, an initiative aimed at controlling population but one that conservative groups charge tolerates abortions and forced sterilizations in China.

Canada which also pumps money into the fund has no plans to follow suit, according to officials in Ottawa.

White House officials said recently that conservative activists have for months quietly pressured the administration to prove President George Bush's anti-abortion credentials by permanently denying money to the United Nations Population Fund.

The fund helps countries deal with reproductive and sexual health, family planning and population strategy.

Just last year, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate that the U.N. agency does "invaluable work" and "provides critical population assistance to developing countries."

The cancellation of the funding comes in the wake of a study by a U.S. government fact-finding mission to China in early May which reportedly found no evidence that the U.N.'s program directly or indirectly facilitates forced sterilizations and abortions in China.

A British delegation visited China a month before the U.S. team arrived and its investigators also did not find evidence that U.N. funds were misused for such purposes.

In advance of the formal announcement, 48 members of Congress asked Bush recently to explain why he had withheld the US $34 million after approving it in January.

They also asked the president to release the report from the U.S. fact-finding mission to China.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan promised that the administration will release the report when Bush's decision on the U.N. money is formally announced.

Critics of the decision said it was driven by politics.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, attributed it to the White House's "mindless zeal to take care of their right-wing base."

But Deal Hudson, editor of the Roman Catholic magazine Crisis, praised Bush's move.

"My information is that it's permanently withheld, and that's good news to people who think like I do," Hudson said.

"The U.N. population fund is bad policy because it relies on population control rather than economic development to address problems of poverty; and the problem is not population, the problem is underdevelopment."

The Asian Pacific Post in its May 23 edition reported that Canadian taxpayers gave US$6.5 million to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Critics allege that some of the money goes to support China's brutal one-child policy which involves forced abortions.

China's one-child policy was introduced by the communists in 1979 to ensure that China, which has historically been prone to floods and famine, could feed all its people.

Testimony at U.S. Congressional hearings revealed that one-child policy enforcers in China's rural areas maintained this barbaric and brutal practice.

Medical information on women was posted in town centres to help the enforcers spy on the local population.

In many cases babies from induced abortions were given injections so that they would die.

China insists the practices outlined in U.S. congressional hearings are against the central government's current policy, but admits they continue in parts of the country to enforce the national one-child-per-family order.

The UNFPA for its part says that it does not use American money for its Chinese programs, and that its work in China is limited to 32 counties where the one-child family policy is no longer enforced.