Brown to warn Obama over protectionism | White House opens doors to black incumbent | Obama's 'wind of change' blows apart Senate | Bush 'gave Pentagon authority for al-Qaeda attacks | Comment Central: what is your biggest hope for Obama?

Barack Obama, the US president-elect, will use executive powers to reverse his predecessor's policies on stem cell research and oil exploration in national parks, a senior aide has indicated.

John Podesta, who is handling Mr Obama's preparations to take over in the White House on January 20, said that Mr Obama was reviewing Mr Bush’s executive orders on those and other issues - believed to include funding family planning in third world countries - as he prepares to put his own stamp on policy after eight years of Republican rule.

“As a candidate, Senator Obama said that he wanted all the Bush executive orders reviewed, and decide which ones should be kept, and which ones should be repealed, and which ones should be amended. And that process is going on. It’s been undertaken,” Mr Podesta said last night.

“There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we’ll see the president do that.

“I think that he feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set.”

Use of executive authority is the quickest way for a new president to exert his power, given that passage of new laws by Congress can be a painfully slow process, even when the chief executive enjoys a legislative majority.

Mr Podesta pointed specifically to two particularly controversial Bush executive orders as candidates for reversal.

“I think across the board, on stem cell research, on a number of areas, you see the Bush administration even today moving aggressively to do things that I think are probably not in the interest of the country,” Mr Podesta said, in what appeared to be a warning shot across the bows of the Bush administration not to press ahead with controversial policies in the dying days of the presidency.

The Senate voted on July 19 to remove restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, only for Mr Bush to veto the legislation the following day. Mr Obama, by contrast, has supported stem cell research in an effort to find cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's.

The federal Bureau of Land Management has said that it is opening about 360,000 acres (145,000 hectares) of public land in Utah to oil and gas drilling, leading to protests from environmentalists. “They want to have oil and gas drilling in some of the most sensitive, fragile lands in Utah,” Mr Podesta said. “I think that’s a mistake.”

Other members of Mr Obama's team have confirmed that the 44th president intends to "hit the ground running", in a manner reminiscent of the start of the Blair premiership in Britain in 1997.

Times Recommends

• No apology for Germany’s own Nazi victims
• Intricate web of fear and hope tying down deal
• Victims remembered a year after Mumbai attacks