Bush flies to carrier in Pacific to proclaim peace

In a production the White House might have borrowed from Hollywood, President Bush will tell America tonight – from the deck of a homecoming aircraft carrier in the Pacific – that to all intents and purposes the war in Iraq is over.

Mr Bush is flying to the USS Abraham Lincoln as it returns to San Diego to deliver what, in everything but name, is a victory speech. He will arrive on the carrier not by F-15 or F-18 jet (precluded by navy flight safety regulations) but on a more modest twin-engined turboprop aircraft.

But the event will be no less of a media spectacular for that. The plane, with a crew of four top navy fliers, will make a cable-assisted landing. Last night, frantic preparations for the eminent visitor were under way on the Abraham Lincoln. Never before has a president addressed his country from an aircraft carrier at sea.

In his appearance, scheduled for 9pm prime time on the East Coast, Mr Bush will stop short of using the word "victory". Instead he will announce – after receiving advice from General Tommy Franks, the US commander who ran the war – that "major combat operations" have ended. A new phase, the reconstruction of Iraq, has begun, the President will say.

The circumspection is deliberate. For one thing, pockets of resistance remain, as two days of fighting between US troops and protesters in the city of Fallujah – in which at least 15 Iraqis were killed – have shown. Almost daily anti-American protests are reported, while basic services are only gradually being restored and a humanitarian crisis threatens in parts of the country.

Furthermore, as Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, acknowledged yesterday, there are some important loose ends to be tied up – most notably the continuing failure to discover any of the chemical or biological weapons Saddam was alleged by Britain and the US to possess, which is starting to cause some embarrassment at the White House.

Then there is the uncertain fate of the dictator himself. Whatever the authenticity of yesterday's faxed message to a Arabic-language newspaper in London, purportedly signed by Saddam and announcing a future speech, American searchers have failed to establish whether he was killed by the second targeted air strike against him, on 7 April, or whether he is in hiding, probably in Baghdad.

Thirdly, by avoiding a formal statement that the fighting is over, President Bush will give American forces more latitude on the ground. Under the Geneva conventions, the victor must release prisoners of war and cease operations aimed at individual enemy leaders.

The US would thus, theoretically, be barred from searching for Saddam and other leaders and possible war criminals from the ousted Baathist regime. "This is not a formal legalistic ending of the conflict," Mr Fleischer said. "It is the fact that major combat operations have ended." But tonight, however, these considerations will pale beside the heady emotion of the moment, as the commander in chief arrives among sailors thrilled to be returning home to their families, their mission at last accomplished after a near record 10 unbroken months at sea.

The joyful stage was already being set in Baghdad, where a beaming Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, went to the US base at what only a month ago was still Saddam International Airport, to hail US troops as "heroes". They had accomplished, he said, "possibly the fastest march on a capital in modern military history". The setting of war is no less suitable for Mr Bush. The President is never more comfortable than when surrounded by the military, which revels in his simple, unabashedly patriotic language, and where there is little need for attention to diplomacy's nuances.

But the occasion will also symbolise the staggering military pre-eminence of the US, that the war to remove Saddam Hussein has underscored so clearly. This war has not only swept aside what had been billed as one of the more formidable militaries of the Middle East with contemptuous ease. It has left the US in a uniquely dominant position in one of the most unstable yet strategically vital regions of the world.

When Mr Bush takes to the TV screen tonight, for all the obligatory caveats, that region will be his to propose, and dispose. Even in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for which the long awaited "road-map" to peace was published by the big powers yesterday, the role of the US, the unchallenged megapower, will be decisive.

The Abraham Lincoln leads one of the five supercarrier groups that took part in the war. There are nine such carriers in all, symbols par excellence of American ability to project massive power to any corner of the globe. The ship alone can cost $4bn (£2.5bn); a single carrier group, flanked by missile-carrying cruisers and guarded by nuclear submarines, packs more firepower than the entire armed forces of many developed countries.

The stage management of tonight's address is also part of Mr Bush's domestic strategy, as he gears up for the 2004 election campaign. With the economy faltering and his tax-cut plans in trouble on Capitol Hill, his advisers are counting heavily on the President's perceived competence on national security issues. In that sense too, the backdrop of the Abraham Lincoln is ideal for Mr Bush, whose approval rating is once more over 70 per cent.

At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, his father hailed the event with a restrained address from the Oval Office. But George H W Bush failed to use his popularity as a war leader to drive through his domestic agenda. The result was electoral defeat by Bill Clinton 18 months later. The son aboard the aircraft carrier is determined not to make the same mistake.

Rumsfeld glories in triumph as he praises troops' war effort

By Donald Macintyre in Baghdad

As George Bush prepared to tell Americans that the war in Iraq was all but over the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, made the first visit to Baghdad by any senior US government figure since before the first Gulf War. He thanked US troops and told the Iraqi people the soldiers would stay only as long as it took for them to make the transition from "tyranny to freedom".

After a military display that one of his generals has called the "greatest force on earth" – one which has vastly underpinned his influence in Washington – Mr Rumsfeld said: "The coalition is committed to helping you as you take control of your country and make the transition from tyranny to freedom and self-government.

"We will stay as long as necessary to help you do that, and not a day longer."

In a broadcast on Iraqi radio frequencies and on a US-run television channel, he urged Iraqis to help hunt down Saddam loyalists and promised that US forces were working hard to restore services disrupted by the war.

"Let me be clear: Iraq belongs to you. We do not want to run it. Our coalition came to Iraq for a purpose – to remove a regime that oppressed your people and threatened ours," Mr Rumsfeld said. "I am delighted to be able to visit Baghdad and your country and witness the liberation of your country. The coalition has no intention of owning or running Iraq."

He also called on Iraqis to tell Allied solders about former Iraqi officials and foreign fighters who might still be in their neighbourhoods.

Mr Rumsfeld said the Bush administration is using diplomatic efforts to encourage countries to turn over Iraqi fugitives to US authorities. "My impression is some [countries] that were accepting them are making a good start," he told a rally of US troops at Baghdad airport.

He said: "We want the Iraqi people to live in freedom so they can build a future where the Iraqi leaders answer to the Iraqi people rather than killing them."

The US Defence Secretary visited a power plant south of Baghdad, one of three generating stations that US forces helped restart after taking control of the capital.

Officials from the Army Corps of Engineers said that 40 to 50 per cent of power to Baghdad had been restored.

As Mr Rumsfeld visited Baghdad, Major-General Tim Cross, the British second in command of the US-led body set up to oversee reconstruction, said that the team hopes to be out of the country by the end of June.