Continuing a public relations campaign to counterattack criticism over his Iraq policy, President George W. Bush insisted Monday that "very good progress" has been made in the rebuilding of Iraq.

"In all due respect to politicians here in Washington, D.C., who make comments, they're just wrong about our strategy. We've had a strategy from the beginning," Bush said in an interview with US media, responding to criticism that his administration lacks a coherent strategy in Iraq.

"We are making very good progress about the establishment of a free Iraq," he noted.

Asked about reported bickering among his foreign policy team, Bush said: "The person who is in charge is me."

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld openly complained last week that the White House left him in the dark on the creation of an "Iraq Stabilization Group" headed by Presidential National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. The move is widely believed to a diminution of Rumsfeld's authority over the Iraq policy.

In an interview with NBC on Sunday, senator Richard Lugar, a Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged Bush to contain the infighting of his foreign policy team.

"The president has to be president," the senator said. "That means the president over the vice president, and over these secretaries' of state and defense."

(Xinhua News Agency October 14, 2003)