by Marc Carnegie
NEW YORK, Aug 30 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush's Republican party opened its national convention here on Monday, painting him as a strong leader who deserved four more years in the White House to keep up the war on terror.
Thousands of party faithful gathered in New York's famed Madison Square Garden to start a four-day gala that wraps up Thursday when Bush lays out his second-term agenda in a speech that will be watched around the world.
"We will leave here with momentum that will carry us to victory in November," party chairman Ed Gillespie said to cheers as the convention got under way.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will face Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards when voters casts their ballots on November 2, an election touted by both sides as the most important in a generation.
The vice president was greeted with chants of "Four more years!" as he arrived to watch delegates formally nominate the Bush-Cheney ticket on Monday morning, the only daytime session of the convention.
Delegates also adopted the party platform, an agenda more conservative than the positions of moderate speakers like California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who will be highlighted during the convention.
It supported a constitutional ban on abortion and same-sex marriages, affirmed "America's role in leading the world toward greater freedom" and hailed Bush for his campaign against terrorism.
"President Bush has rallied America to its calling -- to make the world safer and better," it said.
With polls showing a neck-and-neck race that could pivot on swing states such as Ohio, Republicans pressed their twin messages that Kerry is too indecisive -- and that Bush is the tough leader America needs.
Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri told a breakfast for Ohio Republicans that Kerry had tried to be on both sides of every issue from tax policy to the war in Iraq during his career in the US Senate.
"He was for removing Saddam Hussein, but not by force. He's waiting for the next (Iraq) election, I guess," Blunt said, drawing laughs from the crowd.
Bush, on the campaign trail on Monday in New Hampshire and Michigan, said in an interview with NBC television that the United States had to keep projecting an image of strength in the world.
"When we succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's the beginning of the end for extremists," Bush said. "We cannot show weakness in this world today, because the enemy will exploit that weakness."
The Bush campaign was bolstered by a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll on Monday that showed him gaining ground in two states -- Wisconsin and Pennsylvania -- that the Democrats won four years ago.
Among likely voters, Bush held a 48-45 percent lead in Wisconsin and were tied at 47 percent in Pennsylvania, the polls said.
The 58-year-old Texan has made the war on terror the centrepiece of his re-election bid, and Monday night's session was expected to pay tribute to the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Also set to speak were former Rudolph Giuliani, mayor of New York when those attacks demolished the World Trade Center's twin towers, and maverick Senator John McCain, who had also been courted by the Democratic party.
McCain, revered by many Americans for surviving torture during more than five years in a Vietnamese prison camp, lauded the president's response to September 11 in his speech, excerpts of which were handed out in advance.
"He has been tested and has risen to the most important challenge of our time, and I salute him. I salute his determination to make this world a better, safer, freer place," McCain said.
Bernard Kerik, New York City's police commissioner when the attacks took place, told a press conference that "this president only" had helped make the United States safer after the deadly attacks.
The symbolism of the September 11 attacks carry great weight for Bush, and the administration has said it has intelligence that Al-Qaeda may want to strike again before the election.
A high-tech intelligence analysis centre with staff drawn from 20 agencies opened in New York last week to guard against the possibility of terrorist attacks.
SWAT teams in all-black riot gear, secret service agents, New York police and other security personnel have turned the normally bustling area around Madison Square Garden into a virtual fortress.
Thousands of people protested Monday outside Madison Square Garden, a day after more than 100,000 flooded the streets of the city for a major anti-Bush march.