George W. Bush mounted a strong defence of the invasion of Iraq on the first full day of his state visit to Britain on Wednesday.
Mr Bush, who arrived on Tuesday evening on the first state visit by a US president in more than 80 years, used an address at Banqueting House in central London to argue that history has shown that nations are right to resort to war to defend peace and values.
Warning that a global threat of terror still exists, the president said "sometimes the measured use of force is the only thing that protest us from a chaotic world ruled by force," arguing that "liberation is still a moral goal."
His address took place on a day of pomp and ceremonial, that began on Wednesday with a formal welcome for Mr Bush and his wife Laura from the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace.
Later on Wednesday the president is to meet British families who lost relatives in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. The meeting was originally planned to take place in a memorial garden overlooked by the US Embassy, but the meeting was moved inside the embassy building because of security concerns.
London's Metropolitan police, which has cancelled all leave until the president leaves Britain on Friday, said that about 4,300 officers would be on security duties on Wednesday, rising to just over 5,000 officers on Thursday, when an estimated 100,000 people are expected to join a protest march against US policy in Iraq.
However, there was embarrassment for the palace on Wednesday, when the Daily Mirror revealed that it had slipped an undercover reporter into the vast Buckingham Palace staff ahead of the Bush visit.
The security lapse was revealed two days after Lindis Percy, a peace campaigner, was arrested for staging a lone protest by scaling the front gates of Buckingham Palace. She said that her two-hour protest exposed weaknesses in security for the visit, in which Mr Bush and his wife Laura will be guests at Buckingham Palace for three nights.
David Blunkett, home secretary, said on Thursday the government had ordered a comprehensive review of security arrangements at the palace but assured MPs that despite the breach Britain's security forces worked with a high degree of "skill and professionalism."
"The system as a whole needs to be reviewed urgently... and I expect the commission to deliver an interim report by the end of the year," Mr Blunkett said.
Visit marked by protests
Protests against the visit kicked off in earnest on Tuesday night with a rally organised by the Stop the War Coalition in central London, and a march by supporters of the Campaign against Climate Change to the US embassy.
On Wednesday Stop the War staged an alternative state procession using protesters dressed as the president and the Queen. Later in the day, Ken Livingstone, the left-wing mayor of London, is hosting a peace reception at City Hall - Mr Livingstone said that the cost of policing the Bush visit would add £2 to the average council tax bill in the capital. "I think most Londoners would be happy to give £4 for him not to come," the mayor said.
On Thursday, Amnesty International is organising what it calls a "small, symbolic" demonstration at 11-12am in Whitehall opposite Downing Street. Protesters wearing orange boiler suits, blacked-out ski goggles and surgical masks will represent the detention without charge of more than 660 prisoners at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The US says that the detainees are illegal combatants and therefore can be held indefinitely without charge.
The centrepiece of the anti-Bush protests is the march on Thursday afternoon from Malet Street to Trafalgar Square via Whitehall, organised jointly by the Stop the War Coalition, the CND and the Muslim Association of Britain. Kate Hudson, CND chairwoman, said on Tuesday that "given the level of interest we are now looking at 100,000 marchers or more".
Andy Trotter, the Met's deputy assistant commissioner, dismissed concerns about continental trouble-makers flooding into London. "Anarchists aren't the best at organising," he said.
The march will culminate in the felling of a statue of Mr Bush in Trafalgar Square, in a gesture intended to evoke the televised toppling by US soldiers of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad last April.
