WASHINGTON - Despite saying last year that it wanted to move quickly to establish military tribunals for terrorism defendants, the Bush administration is now in no hurry to conduct such proceedings, officials and others say.

A principal reason, the officials and analysts say, is that the pressure to bring some prisoners before a tribunal quickly to demonstrate swift retribution for the Sept. 11 attacks has faded.

At the same time, government officials are now confident that they may detain the Taliban and prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere as enemy combatants and continue to gain valuable information from them through interrogations.

"The priority now is to continue to gather intelligence from these people, not to put them before any kind of court," an administration official said.

The official said that there would certainly be no tribunals this year and perhaps not until late next year at the earliest.

This represents a reversal from the administration's approach last year. A month after the attacks, President Bush surprised Congress with an order providing for tribunals to deal with many prisoners taken in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In March, William J. Haynes II, the Defense Department's general counsel, rebuffed an effort by the American Bar Association to help shape the regulations that would govern the tribunals, saying that there was not enough time.

Haynes said that using the help of the lawyers' group would be impractical because of "the need to move decisively and expeditiously on the war against terrorism."

But the senior government official who discussed the new approach said that the emphasis was now heavily weighted to preventing terrorist acts. That, the official said, means intensive interrogation of the detainees.

Victoria Clarke, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department, said that "there was never a sense to do this as quickly as possible but there was direction to do this as appropriately as possible."

Clarke said that Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, made it clear he wanted subordinates to develop a tribunal system "in as thoughtful and deliberate fashion as possible to make sure we would be prepared if and when the president decides to bring someone before a military commission."

Those in custody considered the most likely candidates for a military tribunal are two senior officials of al-Qaida: Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who has been described as a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, believed to be the al-Qaida director of operations.

Binalshibh was arrested in Pakistan in September; Zubaydah was picked up there in March. Officials said that those two were also the most important subjects for continued interrogation. Once put before a tribunal, analysts said, they would no longer be available for questioning by authorities.

Despite the more deliberate pace of creating military tribunals, the Defense Department has started to look to staff the system, officials said. Candidates are being considered for the posts of prosecutor general and chief defense counsel, as well as for slots on the appeals panel.