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Bush says world a safer place without Saddam

US President George W. Bush, saying the world was a safer place without Saddam Hussein, sought on Saturday to justify his war with Iraq to the American people.

His weekly radio broadcast came amid continuing unrest in Iraq, with a guerrilla rocket attack on a Baghdad hotel housing officials in the US-led administration and Iraqi police saying American soldiers had killed four more civilians.

"The world is safer today because, in Iraq, our coalition ended a regime that cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction," Bush said.

US troops said they had found 23 SA-7 surface-to-air missiles and hundreds of weapons, including plastic explosives, buried in an orchard near Saddam's home town of Tikrit on Saturday.

A US military spokesman described the haul as one of the most significant weapons seizures of recent weeks and a sign of how Saddam loyalists were still equipped to pose a threat to US forces.

But it was a tough week for the American leader, and for his staunch ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Bush's appeal at the UN for foreign troops and cash to bolster security and reconstruction in Iraq met a cool response, and in Washington members of congress raised concerns over a multibillion-dollar bill for the Middle East nation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said after talks with Bush at his Camp David retreat outside Washington that Moscow would wait for details of a proposed US resolution to the UN before deciding on participation in Iraq's reconstruction.

In another blow for Bush and Blair, US officials said an interim report was expected to say no conclusive evidence had been found that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction -- the key claim Washington and London used for going to war in March.

Blair's standing in opinion polls has plummeted -- like Bush -- amid questions of his reasons for war.

Blair's inner circle has also been hit by a judicial inquiry into responsibility for the suicide of one of the nation's top weapons experts on Iraq, David Kelly, which cast an unprecedented light on the inner workings of government.

The US currently has around 130,000 troops and Britain around 20,000 in Iraq, but the security situation remains fraught. Some 80 American troops have died in action and many have been wounded since Bush declared major war over in Iraq on May 1.

The turmoil fueled protests on Saturday in cities around the world, with demonstrators calling for an end to the US-led occupation.

In Iraq, US and British soldiers have struggled to bring stability for the country's 26 million people. Washington activated 10,000 National Guard troops on Friday for Iraq duty and put another 5,000 on standby.
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