bush lauding "alliance of values"

The 50-minute speech began with a well-received joke, as the president made light of protests against his visit by suggesting there were some who would rather see him suspended above the Thames in a glass box like "the last famous American" to visit - a reference to the illusionist David Blaine.

But Mr Bush quickly reverted to his more familiar themes: the global war against terror, ending the "cycle of dictatorship" in the Middle East, and the "advance of freedom".

He said the foreign policies of Britain and the US were guided by their "deepest beliefs" in the value of human rights and "open societies ordered by moral conviction".

"The United States and Great Britain share a mission in the world beyond the balance of power or the simple pursuit of interest," he said. "We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings. Together, our nations are standing and sacrificing for this high goal in a distant land at this very hour. America honours the idealism and bravery of the sons and daughters of Britain."

Mr Bush referred to the "idealism" of Woodrow Wilson, the last US president to stay at Buckingham Palace, whose appeals for global justice in the wake of the first world war led to the creation of the League of Nations.

But - in what appeared to be a swipe the United Nations for its refusal to sanction the invasion of Iraq - he said: "The League of Nations, lacking both credibility and will, collapsed at the first challenge of the dictators. Free nations failed to recognise, much less confront, the aggressive evil in plain sight."

etc