President's campaign for re-election strengthened

President Bush yesterday hailed the capture of Saddam Hussein as a crucial step on the path towards a free and democratic Iraq. But he warned that the success would not of itself signify an end to the violence in the country.

In a short address from the White House, a measured, almost sombre Mr Bush promised Iraqis that, having been taken alive, Saddam would now "face the justice he had denied to millions".

His demise was further assurance that "the torture chambers and the secret police had gone for ever". But, the President warned, the US would still face "terrorists who would rather go on killing the innocent than accept the rise of liberty in the heart of the Middle East."

First word that Saddam had been found was brought to Mr Bush at Camp David on Saturday night by Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence. But his initial reaction was, "Are you sure?", fearing that the captured person might have been a lookalike or one of the dictator's many doubles.

If it was good news for the vast majority of Iraqis who loathed their former leader, it was arguably even better news for the White House. Iraq has emerged as the issue on which Mr Bush could be most vulnerable in his 2004 re-election campaign, as the public increasingly questioned the rationale for the invasion in March.

But Mr Bush's supporters, the Democrats jockeying to challenge him in 2004, and independent analysts agree that this symbolic closing of a chapter in Iraqi and Middle Eastern history is more than a short-term political boost for the President.

The seizure of Saddam will not end resistance - some fear that there will be at least a temporary increase in the insurgency. But, runs the unanimous view in Washington, it provides an unmatched opportunity to mend diplomatic fences, bring in new countries to help with peacekeeping and speed reconstruction efforts.

The success will enable the President to claim that despite at least 195 combat deaths of US servicemen in Iraq since the war proper ended, US intelligence is getting on top of the guerrillas. Just conceivably, Saddam will provide information leading investigators to his alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Not only has attention been deflected from embarrassments such as alleged overcharging on Iraq contracts by Halliburton, the oil services company once run by Dick Cheney, the vice-President. Administration officials also believe prospects have improved for the mission of the former Secretary of State James Baker to Europe, which starts today. Ostensibly aimed at persuading France, Germany and Russia to forgive Iraqi debt, the trip has turned into a diplomatic exercise to heal the row provoked by the exclusion of companies from $18.6bn of reconstruction contracts.

"[Secretary of State] Colin Powell is an internationalist, but it's never certain that he has the full backing of a divided administration," Joe Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said. "But Baker is Mr Bush's man, and his views are like those of Powell. This is a great opportunity."

There were words of caution. Kenneth Pollack, former CIA analyst and the top Brookings Institution specialist on Iraq, warned that the capture of Saddam on its own would not determine the success of reconstruction. "The slow rebuilding, the gasoline lines, are unrelated to Saddam."

Nonetheless, Saturday's operation has strengthened Mr Bush's position against Democrats seeking his job, leaving them no choice but to applaud the President but somehow to set themselves apart from him.

It could also shake up the Democratic race, helping pro-war candidates such as Joe Lieberman. Howard Dean, whose opposition to the war has helped make him frontrunner, said that the US had a chance now to internationalise the post-war effort and work with the United Nations and Nato.

John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator who has struggled to explain his vote giving Mr Bush authority to go to war, called on Mr Bush to "reach out and bury the hubris and unilateralism".