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It's unclear whether Saddam Hussein is still alive after coalition forces dropped four bunker-busting bombs on a restaurant where he was believed to be meeting with his sons, President Bush said Tuesday.

"I don't know whether he survived," Bush said at a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "The only thing I know is that he's losing power."

A U.S. warplane dropped the bombs Monday afternoon on a western Baghdad restaurant, blasting a a crater several stories deep. At least three buildings were destroyed.

Blair said Saddam's regime is collapsing under the weight of allied attacks in Iraq and that "the power of Saddam is ending."

Blair and Bush offered personal assessments of the war after a meeting at Hillsborough Castle outside Belfast.

In addition to showcasing military progress in Iraq, the two leaders holding their third meeting in three weeks were looking ahead to the postwar period while seeking to minimize splits on who should govern and rebuild the country. They also sought to boost peace talks in Northern Ireland.

A key component of the talks Tuesday was to be on U.N. resolutions that would define what role the international body would play in reconstruction and governing. Blair sought to downplay the divide, in which the British leader seems to want a more influential U.N. role than Bush favors.

Bush has said he supports a U.N. role and the creation of an interim governing authority for Iraq. But he has not provided key details, such as the exact nature of the U.N.'s role and the makeup of the authority.

"There will be a vital role for the U.N. in the reconstruction of Iraq," Blair said. "But the key is that Iraq in the end will be run by the Iraqi people."

Questioned for details on that "vital role," Bush defined it thus: "That means being a party to the progress being made in Iraq."

Bush added a complex set of issues by heeding Blair's call to meet in Northern Ireland and by backing Blair's peace blueprint, due out later this week. Blair has won political IOUs from Bush by backing the president on Iraq in the face of fierce opposition at home.

"I support and my government strongly supports their efforts," Bush said. "This is a historic moment. I ask all the communities of Northern Ireland to seize this opportunity for peace."

Blair said progress being made toward peace in Northern Ireland would have a positive impact on the Middle East peace process.

"To those who can sometimes say that the process in the Middle East is hopeless," he said, "I say we can look at Northern Ireland and take some hope from that."

Both leaders looked ahead to issuing a "roadmap" to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. That plan is to be released after the new prime minister for the Palestinian Authority is confirmed.

Both leaders sought to rebuff comments that U.S.-led forces were planning to occupy Iraq.

"This was indeed a war of liberation and not conquest," Blair said.

"It's not going to be a repeat of 1991," the prime minister said. " The power of Saddam is ending. And our enemy in this conflict has always been Saddam and his regime, not the Iraqi people."

Blair hopes presidential backing will strengthen his hand when he publishes his government's new Northern Ireland plans by Thursday, the fifth anniversary of the so-called Good Friday accords. The pact sought to end three decades of sectarian conflict in the British territory.

The visit demonstrates Bush's support for Blair's approach, administration officials said.

"This is a very significant step in the life of Northern Ireland," Powell said.

The Iraq war undercut support for Bush among some citizens in Northern Ireland, particularly in the most hard-line Catholic areas.

In the Bogside district of Londonderry, Northern Ireland's second-largest city, a 50-foot-high wall that for more than three decades has read "You are now entering Free Derry" was painted solid black in a gesture of mourning for Iraqis killed in the war.

The area's veteran civil rights activist, Eamonn McCann, said most Derry Roman Catholics considered Bush a hypocrite for telling the Irish Republican Army that violence doesn't pay.

"Bush is saying to political leaders here: Give up the gun, don't use violence to pursue political ends, follow the rule of law. He is demanding that they do that even as he prosecutes the war in Iraq," McCann said. "I doubt if I've ever encountered anything as grotesquely hypocritical as the exercise in Hillsborough."

photo credit and caption:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush meet in the courtyard of Hillsborough Castle in Hillsborough, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, April 8, 2003. In their third meeting in three weeks, Bush and Blair were meeting at Hillsborough Castle outside Belfast to discuss reconstruction in Iraq as well as peace efforts in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

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