Bush appeared in the sun-baked White House Rose Garden days before heading off for a month at his Texas ranch, facing slipping opinion poll ratings and the smouldering controversy over Iraq's alleged weapons programs.

Just 15 months before he faces voters in his re-election battle, Bush also put a sunny complexion on the sluggish US economy and said he was confident his government could "thwart" a feared new wave of terror attacks.

Bush admitted he did not know when US forces would snare Iraq's ousted leader Saddam Hussein, but claimed credit for lifting a "blanket of fear" in the country.

"I don't know how close we are to getting Saddam Hussein. Closer than we were yesterday, I guess. All I know is, we're on the hunt," Bush said.

He lauded the killings by US soldiers of two of Iraq's "most despicable henchmen," Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, which he said made claims that the former regime could one day return to power ring hollow.

Bush sidestepped a row over his discredited claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq sought uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa by saying: "I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course."

But he redirected his answer to the question of whether it was right to oust Saddam Hussein, rather than whether he was right to have used the claim as justification for the war.

"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," Bush said.

Despite the failure to find conclusive evidence of Iraq's banned weapons programs used to justify the war, Bush said he was confident "the truth" would come out, after US forces had sifted through piles of documents discovered in Iraq.

Bush, criticised in the media for holding too few formal news conferences, also pressed home his drive for peace in the Middle East, days after meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian prime minister Mahmud Abbas.

The goal of a Palestinian state by 2005 enshrined in the roadmap for Middle East peace was still "realistic" he said, and claimed "pretty good progress in a short period of time," since diving into Middle East peacemaking earlier this year.

Hours after North Korea renewed its call for one-on-one talks with the United States, Bush revealed he had just spoken by telephone with China's President Hu Jintao as part of his drive to defuse the nuclear crisis.

"I told President Hu that it is very important for us to get Japan and South Korea and Russia involved, as well," said Bush, who has told Pyongyang that his government will only discuss the drama in a multilateral setting.

"We are actually beginning to make serious progress about sharing responsibility on this issue, in such a way that I believe will lead to an attitudinal change by (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Il," he said.

Bush also made a pitch for support in the US bid to frustrate the alleged nuclear aspirations of another member of his "axis of evil," Iran.

"We've got to work in a collective way with other nations to remind Iran that, you know, they shouldn't develop a nuclear weapon," said Bush.

"It's going to require more than one voice saying that, however. It's going to require a collective effort of the Europeans, for example, to recognize the true threat of an armed Iran to achieving peace in the Middle East.

And on another foreign policy crisis, he signalled that the time was not yet right for a long-awaited US mission to help a West African force restore peace to Liberia after President Charles Taylor leaves the country.

"The conditions that I laid out for the Liberian rescue mission still exist: Charles Taylor must go, a ceasefire must be in place, and we will be there to help ECOWAS," said Bush.

With the state of the US economy still a concern for Bush supporters, the president said he saw "hopeful signs" that growth was picking up.

"Yet the unemployment rate is still too high. And we will not rest until Americans looking for work can find a job," Bush said.

The US unemployment rate shot up to a nine-year high of 6.4 percent in June as businesses axed 30,000 jobs.

Those figures may have factored into the results of a new Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll issued Wednesday which found that only 47 percent of those surveyed would vote for Bush in the 2004 election.

A day after the Homeland Security department warned that al-Qaeda could be planning more hijackings of airliners, Bush said his government was doing all it could to frustrate their efforts.

"Being on alert means that we contact all who are responsible, who've got positions of responsibility. And so we're focusing on the airline industry right now, and we've got reason to do so. But I'm confident we will thwart the attempts."

WAR.WIRE