LONDON The British government called out the army yesterday to help beleaguered farmers deal with the rapidly spreading foot-and-mouth blight and scheduled the slaughter of thousands more animals to eradicate the livestock virus. But the government rejected increasing calls for the use of vaccination to stop the highly contagious disease.

With 394 confirmed cases of the disease in Britain and more than 250,000 sheep, pigs, goats, and cows already killed, the five-week-old outbreak turned into a political issue for the first time yesterday as Britain"s opposition Conservative Party complained that Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Labor Party government had let the disease run "out of control."

Conservative leader William Hague suggested yesterday that the national election expected to be held May 3 should be delayed, because politicians can"t campaign in quarantined rural areas. Labor leaders spurned the idea.

Blair holds a big lead in opinion polls, and pundits agree he"s eager to have the election this spring while he is still sitting pretty. The prime minister here has the right to choose the day when he stands for re-election.

The government did its best to maintain an aura of business as usual. Census takers continued their rounds, but without entering farms officially quarantined because of the disease.

Tourism Minister Janet Anderson set off for the United States to tell American travelers they don"t have to cancel that planned summer vacation in "England"s green and pleasant land."

But as smoke from funeral pyres darkened the skies over rural England, there was a sense of a situation getting worse rather than better.