Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death, prompting fears of fresh violence in Iraq.
There was also European condemnation of capital punishment and new questions about the fairness of the tribunal that ordered him to hang.
Critics accused George Bush of deliberately arranging the timing of the sentence, handed down two days before tomorrow's pivotal mid-term elections in which Democrats are fighting to regain control of the US Congress.
Many European nations voiced their opposition to the death penalty, including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, and a leading Italian opposition figure called on the continent to press for Saddam's sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment.
