Ensconced in the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, Bush basked in new public support for the war, after US tank squadrons raided the Iraqi capital in what one commander called "a poke in the eye" for Saddam Hussein's regime.

"Village by village, city by city, liberation is coming," the president said in his weekly radio address Saturday.

"The people of Iraq have my pledge: Our fighting forces will press on until their oppressors are gone and their whole country is free," Bush said.

Bush held a secure videoconference with his war cabinet Saturday and started the task of patching up US relations with Russia, badly strained in the tense diplomatic brinksmanship which preceded the war.

He spoke to President Vladimir Putin by telephone, and called Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, officials said.

Bush was also preparing for an important summit in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Monday and Tuesday with his top ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"They will talk about the status of the ongoing military operation, they will talk about the humanitarian relief efforts, they'll talk about reconstruction and they'll talk about the role of the United Nations," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

Washington appears to have decided to sideline the United Nations as much as possible from the process, instead favoring a provisional military administrator attached to the Pentagon until an interim administration trusted by the Iraqis can be established.

But two top US senators, in a column published Sunday in The Washington Post, said the United States need not, and could not take sole responsibility for post-war Iraq, and should instead seek to involve its key allies via the United Nations.

Democrat Joseph Biden and Republican Chuck Hagel, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cited the need to share the economic burden, fight resentment in the Middle East and overcome questions from many parts of the world about US motives in Iraq.

Loud explosions and artillery fire were heard in Baghdad before dawn Sunday. Beginning around 5:00 am (0100 GMT), explosions and artillery fire could be heard coming from the south as well as occasional blasts in the city center.

On Saturday, US tanks trundled into Baghdad, in what some commanders styled as a show of force designed to puncture the aura of invincibility Saddam Hussein cultivated for his fortress capital.

As a large-scale fighting force, Iraq's army was all but finished, the commander of the US-led air campaign told Pentagon reporters in a telephone press call Saturday from Saudi Arabia.

And he said that US fighter aircraft were stacked up round-the-clock over Baghdad, poised to use precision bombs to protect US ground troops as they move through the streets of the Iraqi capital.

"The Iraqi military as an organized defense in large combat formations doesn't really exist anymore," Lieutenant General T. Michael Moseley said.

"The equipment is there and some of the people are there, but as far as corps and division strength, bringing to bear that combat power on the coalition, it's not the same as it was a couple of weeks ago."

He acknowledged that avoiding civilian casualties and collateral damage in the course of providing close air support to troops in the city was "a tough problem" that US forces hope to overcome with precision strikes.

About 1,000 Iraqi troops were killed in fierce fighting in Baghdad Saturday, according to Colonel David Perkins, commander of the Second Brigade of the US Army's Third Infantry Division, which sent dozens of tanks into the Iraqi capital.

In its latest toll counts Saturday the Pentagon said 79 US military personnel were confirmed dead in the war thus far, eight were missing and seven were prisoners of war.

The latest US opinion polls meanwhile showed growing public support for the war.

A Washington Post/ABC News survey showed that more than nine out of 10 Americans believe the war is going well, and 69 percent of respondents said that going to war with Iraq was justified, even if the US-led forces fail to find any weapons of mass destruction.

Ten thousand anti-war demonstrators turned out for a protest in Oakland, California, and about 1,500 gathered in downtown Chicago, Saturday.

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