Bush Ratings Recover From Record Low Approval

President George Bush yesterday appeared to be moving out from the shadow of Iraq, hurricane Katrina, and high petrol prices, with opinion polls charting an upswing from his record low approval ratings.

Although Mr Bush's political health remains far from robust, his overall approval rating rose from 39% to 47% in early November, the Washington Post-ABC News poll said. The poll also saw improvement in Mr Bush's approval rating on Iraq, which climbed 10 percentage points to 46%, and his conduct of the war on terror, which rose eight percentage points to 56%.

A CNN/USA Today Gallup poll painted a decidedly less rosy picture for Mr Bush, putting his overall approval rating at 41%. His performance on Iraq received an even lower rating, with 61% saying they disapproved of his handling of the war.

However, Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press, said Mr Bush appeared to have arrested a downward trend in his popularity with a more assertive approach on Iraq.

"I think there is a sense that at the very least, Bush has stabilised. He seems to have halted the decline in support for the war and the erosion in his own ratings," he said.

Over the last three weeks, Mr Bush has given five speeches and one press conference to defend his reasons for going to war. He also benefited from a rare moment of relatively good news, with high turnout at last week's Iraqi election.

Mr Doherty cautioned that yesterday's apparent reversal could be derailed by outside events - such as high prices at the petrol pump and disillusion with the administration's response to hurricane Katrina which fuelled Mr Bush's steep decline in popularity in the autumn.

Both polls were conducted between last Thursday and Sunday, and so did not fully register the uproar over President Bush's admission that he authorised the highly secretive National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans suspected of having links with al-Qaida.

Further evidence of domestic spying emerged yesterday following the release of documents detailing FBI surveillance of Greenpeace and anti-poverty organisations in the name of national security.

One FBI document, obtained by the New York Times, described surveillance of a vegan community project in Indiana. A protest against llama fur was also monitored while the Catholic Workers group, which works to alleviate poverty, was described as subscribing to a "semi-communistic ideology". According to the documents, the FBI also used placed informants within Greenpeace in addition to monitoring its demonstrations.