WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush, in the spotlight for probably his final State of the Union speech, hoped Monday to ease the wary US public's worries about the ailing US economy and the Iraq war.
Facing a US Congress in the hands of his Democratic foes and pushed towards the political margins by the 2008 White House race, Bush was to warn against "rashly" pulling US forces from the strife-torn country, the White House said.
In the 9:00 pm (0200 GMT Tuesday) speech, Bush was to defend his year-old "surge" of US troops and say that violence is down "even though there are still troubling times ahead and very tough fighting," said spokeswoman Dana Perino.
The deeply unpopular president was also to push lawmakers to speed approval of an economic stimulus package designed to avert an election-year recession and to make permanent his giant tax cuts, which expire in 2010.
"The long term outlook for the economy is good but we need to do something in the short term," Bush told ABC News Radio in a interview hours before the speech.
"I don't think there will be a recession and one way to make sure there is not a recession is for Congress to pass a robust stimulus package as quickly as possible," he added.
The US Senate is reportedly poised to add measures to the package agreed to by the White House and House of Representatives, which could slow the process.
A recent wave of public opinion polls has found that worries about the economy have overtaken concerns about the five-year-old conflict in Iraq among US voters, with health care issues and terrorism well behind.
A January 20-22 survey by the Wall Street Journal found that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq and 64 percent disapprove of his handling of the economy.
Bush was also to call for a stay-the-course approach on Afghanistan, highlight his new Middle East peace push, and press the Congress to approve free trade pacts with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, US officials said.
In an echo of his second inaugural speech, Bush was to highlight the spread of democracy and was expected to scold a handful of countries -- including Belarus, Cuba, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe -- as outposts of repression, aides said.
Amid escalating tensions with Tehran, Bush will reach out to Iran's population but say that their government's uranium enrichment, missile programs and support for Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon isolate them from the world.
Bush will tell Iran "you should stop that, and rejoin the international community of nations," said senior adviser Ed Gillespie. "The invitation for dialogue remains on the table if the Iranians are willing to stop enriching."
After using the annual address in the past to confront the "axis of evil" -- Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Iran, and North Korea -- as well as warn that the United States is "addicted to oil," and call for overhauling US immigration policy, Bush was not expected to offer much in the way of bold or new initiatives.
He was to renew his call, first made in May 2007, to double US funding to fight AIDS, offer initiatives to help families of US soldiers, and vow to wage war on budgetary "earmarks" that lawmakers use to fund pet projects.
Amid Democratic anger at his plans to sideline the Congress and forge a deal with Baghdad for a long-term US force presence in Iraq, Bush was to insist that his strategy is working and warn against any swift US troop withdrawal.
"There has been a significant decrease in the amount of civilian deaths, in the sectarian violence, and the number of our troops who are being killed," said Perino, who told reporters it would be his final State of the Union.
The White House said Bush would not look backwards -- and Democratic White House hopeful Hillary Clinton was already looking ahead to January 2009, when the next president takes office.
"If we all do our part, next year, it will be a Democratic president giving the State of the Union," she said at a campaign rally in Hartford, Connecticut.
ok/pmh

01/28/2008 21:32 GMT