US President George W Bush will declare the war in Iraq all but over from the deck of a US aircraft carrier steaming home from the conflict, his spokesman said.
Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, hundreds of kilometres at sea, he will say that "major combat operations have ended, and that the next phase has begun, which is the reconstruction of Iraq", Ari Fleischer said.
Bush will note that key aims of the war have been achieved -- including the ouster of Saddam Hussein -- but will stop short of declaring victory or declaring a formal end to the conflict, according to White House officials.
"This is not, from a legal point of view, the end of hostilities. Clearly, we continue to have forces that continue to be shot at, and return fire," Fleischer told reporters.
"While there are pockets of resistance that remain, this is a marked and important moment because, as the president will describe, the Iraqi people now have freedom. The threat to the United States has been removed."
The remarks will come even as US troops still scour Iraq for evidence Saddam possessed banned weapons of mass destruction -- the core of Bush's argument for launching a preemptive war -- and seek clues to the ousted leader's fate.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage warned today that it could take several months to find evidence of Iraq's banned weapons programs because they had been well concealed.
"We're finding now that the capabilities are even more dispersed and disguised than we thought," Armitage said in a speech at the National Defense University. "It's going to take us months to find this material, but find it we will.
And he added: "It's far too easy to hide and move these capabilities and far too difficult to find them."
Bush's speech, thought to be the first by a US president aboard a moving aircraft carrier, comes after the president heard Tuesday from the commander of US-led forces in the Gulf, Tommy Franks, that the major fighting is over.
The remarks are meant to mirror Bush's March 19 televised speech from the White House, in which he announced the beginning of military action to strip Iraq of any prohibited arms and topple Saddam.
Bush has steadily shifted his justification for the war from stripping a hostile regime of chemical and biological weapons -- which Baghdad always denied having -- to liberating the Iraqi people.
Although White House officials insist they are sure Saddam had such arms, Bush and top aides have begun to raise the possibility that he may have ordered them pre-emptively destroyed.
The president will overnight on the carrier but leave the next day before it reaches port, Fleischer said.
The ship is returning to the United States after 10 months at sea fulfilling three missions: Enforcing "no-fly" zones in Iraq, contributing firepower to the war on terrorism; and participating in the war in Iraq.