PRESIDENT BUSH said yesterday that history would prove him right on Iraq as he tried to draw a line under his most torrid month in office.

Facing mounting criticism about the use of dud intelligence to help to justify the war, Mr Bush conceded that US forces had to unearth evidence of weapons of mass destruction in order to shed suspicions about American motives.

However, in an echo of Tony Blair, he insisted that the final verdict would be in his favour. “History will prove the decision we made to be the right decision,” he said.

Staging a hastily arranged, end-of-term news conference in the White House Rose Garden, Mr Bush also tried to end the rancorous finger-pointing about who was responsible for erroneous claims in his pre-war State of the Union address. “I take personal responsibility for everything I say,” he said.

The remark was designed to take the heat off George Tenet, the CIA Director, and Condoleezza Rice, the President’s National Security Adviser. Both had been accused of negligence or manipulation in allowing claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger into the most important speech of the presidential year.

The episode has prompted analysts and newspapers to question whether Dr Rice, who is usually accustomed to a glowing media profile, is up to the job. Mr Bush yesterday stamped on such doubts, saying: “Dr Condoleezza Rice is an honest, fabulous person and America is lucky to have her service. Period.” Last week Stephen Hadley, Dr Rice’s deputy, admitted that he had failed to read two CIA warnings sent to the White House that cast doubt on the uranium claims, which originated from British Intelligence.

Mr Bush used only his eighth news conference since taking office, and the first since the Iraq war, to try to close the issue that has dominated Washington for the past month before the American capital closes down for its August break. Insisting that the squall about Niger uranium did not alter the justification for war, he said: “I also take responsibility for making decisions on war and peace. And I analysed a thorough body of intelligence, good, solid, sound intelligence that led me to come to the conclusion that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”

Public concerns about reasons stated by Washington and London for going to war have been far slower to surface in the United States than in the United Kingdom, but in the past month polls have shown greater scepticism about Mr Bush’s motives.

Echoing Mr Blair’s message to the joint session of Congress earlier this month, Mr Bush said that time would prove him right, but he conceded that it was vital for the US to be seen to be right. “In order to placate the critics and the cynics about intentions of the United States, we need to produce evidence. And I fully understand that. And I’m confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe, that Saddam had a weapons programme.”

In Mr Blair’s speech on July 17 he said: “Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.”

Mr Bush said that he had no idea how close US forces were to capturing Saddam Hussein — “closer than we were yesterday, I guess” — but said that the deaths of Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay, had helped to show ordinary Iraqis that the Baathist regime was not coming back.

Mr Bush said that he would also be proved right about his secondary reason for going to war: “The world will see what I mean when I say a free Iraq will help peace in the Middle East, and a free Iraq will be important for changing attitudes of the people in the Middle East.” He said that he remained hopeful of making good progress in the Middle East and insisted that it was possible to achieve an independent Palestinian state by 2005. Mr Bush also played down any prospect of US military action agianst Iran. But he said that European countries needed to be serious about the nuclear threat posed by Tehran.

• Only 47 per cent of Americans surveyed in a poll by Gallup/CNN/USA Today said that they would vote for Mr Bush in the 2004 election. (AFP)

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