Belgium's interior minister was left red-faced after it emerged that photos comparing US President George W. Bush to a chimpanzee had been used in a police training manual.

"I hadn't seen these photos and I think they are in bad taste," the minister, Patrick Dewael, told the Flemish-language daily Het Laatste Nieuws, which first reported the story.

The pictures in question -- reprinted by the newspaper -- showed a series of the US leader's facial expressions next to shots of a chimpanzee making apparently similar faces.

They were intended to help trainee police officers in the western city of Bruges to recognize the importance of body language in dealing with the public. Bush is shown in poses ranging from pensive to finger-waving debating mode.

The pictures are all the more embarrassing for Dewael since he had signed a letter calling on Belgian municipal authorities and other police chiefs to use the manual.

But he was at pains to insist he did not know about the pictures.

"This collage was not an initiative of the interior ministry," he said, adding that he intended to ask Bruges authorities to withdraw the controversial pages from the manual.