Washington: In what is being viewed as a launch of his re-election bid, US President George W Bush in the final State of the Union address of his term insisted that his foreign policies, including the invasion on Iraq, have made America and the world safer but said the war on terrorism was far from over.

In the carefully-crafted speech to a joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate yesterday (Jan 20, 2004), Bush said the world without Saddam Hussein's regime was a "better and safer place".

Hitting out at the critics of the Iraq war, Bush said, "Let us be candid about the consequences of leaving Saddam Hussein in power. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programmes would continue to this day."

Calling America a "nation with a mission", the US President said the war on terror would continue. "We are also confronting the regimes that harbour and support terrorists, and could supply them with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. The United States and our allies are determined. We refuse to live in the shadow of this ultimate danger."

He said, though tempting, it was wrong to think that the danger of terrorist attacks had passed even as 28 months have gone by since the September 11, 2001 strikes and appealed to the Congress to renew the controversial anti-terrorism laws.