20 March 2004	Saturday	28 Muharram 1425

WASHINGTON, March 19: US President George Bush told officials from 83 nations on Friday on the anniversary of the start of the Iraq invasion that differences over the conflict were in the past and urged no concessions in the "war on terrorism".

"No concession will appease their hatred," Mr Bush said of Al Qaeda and its supporters. "No accommodation will satisfy their endless demands. Their ultimate ambitions are to control the peoples of the Middle East and to blackmail the rest of the world with weapons of mass terror."

Mr Bush devoted much of a speech marking the anniversary of the invasion to the "fight against terrorism". Many governments resist linking the two since there was no evidence connecting Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda, and Iraq only became a magnet for foreign fighters after Saddam was toppled.

In the audience in the White House East Room were ambassadors or other ranking diplomats from 83 nations, including invasion opponents France, Germany, Canada and Russia.

"There have been disagreements in this matter among old and valued friends," Mr Bush said. "Those differences belong to the past. All of us can now agree that the fall of the Iraqi dictator has removed a source of violence, aggression and instability in the Middle East," he said.

Mr Bush was trying to restore the global unanimity that existed in the "war on terrorism" before the Iraq conflict that produced a bitter international divide.

He was clearly speaking to the situation in Spain, where suspected Al Qaeda bombings on March 11 in Madrid killed 202 people and were believed to have been a factor in Spanish voters throwing out a pro-US government in favour of Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. -Reuters