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House Democrats have no interest in restoring the broad ban on oil and gas development off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts but will seek to “delineate areas available for drilling” when Congress returns next year, the second-ranking Democrat in the House said Tuesday.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland made clear in remarks at the National Press Club that some limits on offshore drilling will be pursued.

Congress in October ended a quarter-century ban on drilling in 85 percent of the nation’s offshore federal waters from New England to the Pacific Northwest.

“Nobody is suggesting that we return to the same position (of an across-the-board ban),” said Hoyer, saying that no proposals are being made to reinstate the 26-year-old ban on drilling in Atlantic and Pacific federal waters.

But Hoyer said that “there will be real discussion on the parameters on which drilling will be pursued.”

President-elect Barack Obama has said he would supported some limited expansion of offshore oil and natural gas development if states adjacent to that offshore drilling approve and if it is part of a broader energy plan aimed at moving the country toward greater use of alternative, nonfossil energy sources and greater efficiency.

Currently, virtually all Outer Continental Shelf drilling occurs in the central and western Gulf of Mexico.

While the broad drilling bans, which were first enacted by Congress in 1981, may be history, lawmakers must still work out details about such issues as revenue sharing with states and whether some environmentally or economically sensitive areas should be protected from energy companies.

Without a system of sharing federal royalties with states, it is unlikely many states — if any — would endorse drilling off their coasts.

In September, the House passed legislation to allow offshore drilling along the full length of both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but preserved a 50-mile wide coastal buffer that remained off limits. The bill died in the Senate.

However, the broad drilling ban was allowed to expire in October. The Interior Department estimates those waters contain at least 18 billion barrels of oil, about half of it off the California coast.

“I think there will be efforts to look at further ways to delineate areas available for drilling,” said Hoyer.

Hoyer declined to say when the House might take up legislation to deal with climate change, although he said “there is a consensus” among Democrats and with the incoming Obama administration “that we must address that issue … in a decisive and effective way…” to substantially cut heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

“We will work with the president-elect, Obama, when he becomes president, to determine the timing,” said Hoyer.

A lame duck in a financial downpour, President Bush called senators ahead of Wednesday’s big vote on the financial rescue plan but he seems to wield dwindling overall influence.

Contributing to the problem may be loss of public confidence in the president and complaints that his administration was asleep at the switch on Wall Street regulation.

After weeks of limited public involvement, Bush has been speaking out publicly almost daily on the nation’s financial meltdown and the need for lawmakers to pass a rescue plan that could cost up to $700 billion to protect the larger economy from imploding. And he was working the phones.

Shaken by House rejection of the plan on Monday, and the subsequent 778-point dive in the Dow Jones industrials, supporters made another stand on Wednesday with a sweetened Senate version in hopes of building momentum. The Senate was seen as more supportive than the House, where all 435 seats are on the ballot on Election Day.

The House vote showed how little influence the president has these days on Capitol Hill.

While a majority of Democrats supported the plan, two-thirds of the GOP membership voted “no.” Bush reportedly called nearly every Republican in his home-state delegation. But only four of Texas‘ 19 Republican members voted with him.

“He talked about how he was going to sprint to the end. But he’s sprinting through knee-deep mud,” said Fred Greenstein, a political scientist at Princeton University and author of books on the presidency. “He is one of the lamest of lame-duck presidents.”

With his approval rating in the mid-20s, Bush is seeing what he once liked to call his “political capital” about as devalued as an investment in mortgage-backed securities.

Despite being the first president with a master’s degree in business administration, Bush until recently remained mostly behind the scenes, letting Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson be the point man. But while Paulson clearly knows the subject, he helped fuel suspicions among some that fat cat financial barons would be the prime beneficiaries, given Paulson’s background as former CEO of brokerage Goldman Sachs.

Jack Kemp, the 1996 GOP vice presidential candidate and now an adviser to John McCain, said, “I don’t want to criticize Secretary Paulson because I think he’s done an able job. … But I don’t think this has been sold very carefully or marketed very carefully to both the center left and the center right who worry about taxpayers and Main Street and homeowners.”

“I’ve been calling a lot of conservatives to try to convince them that this is the proper thing to do and an immediate thing that has to be done,” said Kemp, who as housing secretary under the first President Bush helped oversee the Resolution Trust Corp. that tackled the 1980s-1990s savings and loan crisis.

Polls show the economy as the dominant national issue. Large numbers — eight in 10 — fear the financial crisis will impact them directly, according to an AP-Gfk poll conducted Sept. 27-30. Yet 45 percent of all adults still opposed the proposed government bailout, with 38 percent in favor and 16 percent not sure. The poll, as well as other recent ones, found more support when words like “rescue” or “investment” are being used.

The current administration strategy is to persuade Congress and the nation that the plan isn’t a “bailout,” especially one for Wall Street, but a vital step to allow the U.S. to buy an array of bad mortgage-related securities from weakened financial companies so they can raise fresh capital and resume normal lending.

“It’s very important for (lawmakers) to take this very seriously to get credit flowing again,” Bush told reporters on Wednesday.

The dimming of his influence may be part of the price the president is paying for a general loss of confidence in the administration’s ability to deliver — from misleading Congress on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to its fumbled handling of Hurricane Katrina.

The administration also has been taken to task in many quarters for being asleep on financial industry regulation.

While the White House did call early on — unsuccessfully — for tougher regulation of troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it also cultivated a culture encouraging more and more home ownership, from Bush’s trumpeting of an “ownership society” to failure to crack down on financial institutions that wrote mortgages for people who clearly couldn’t afford them.

With the election so close, Bush’s options for political leverage are limited. GOP consultant Rich Galen suggested that’s likely why the president put Paulson in the driver’s seat. “It makes sense when you’re dealing with an issue that is this complex, this fragile, five weeks out from a major election where everything is politicized.”

And because of — or in spite of — Paulson’s ties with Wall Street, many lawmakers trust him more because of that, Galen suggested. “It takes the politics essentially out of it. He understands the semicolons, knows the nuances of what the causes and effects of some of these things are.”

The House of Representatives voted on Monday to begin debate on legislation for a financial markets rescue plan, clearing the way for a final vote on the measure later in the day that would send it to the Senate.

The plan would give the Treasury Department up to $700 billion in buying power to acquire mortgage assets from troubled financial institutions.

If the measure passes the House, it will be sent to the Senate for a vote that is expected by Wednesday. The legislation would then go to President George W. Bush for his signature and enactment.

Debate in the House could be prolonged by skeptics of the plan. Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he and colleagues face “a tough vote.”

“We regret the market conditions which have made this decision day necessary,” he said, opening debate on the legislation. “No one is happy that we have seen the failures that we have seen.”

Since the spring, Wall Street giants like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers have failed while large commercial banks like Washington Mutual and Wachovia have been sold off at fire-sale prices.

Once the plan becomes law, the Treasury will have to establish the process by which it will buy the hard-to-trade assets that have clogged balance sheets and led to tighter lending. Policy-makers hope that by loosening credit markets, they can help restore the financial system to health.

House leaders are pushing for a vote on the legislation by early afternoon, ahead of observance of the Jewish New Year that begins at sundown.

Lawmakers agreed to begin debate by a narrow margin with 220 votes in favor and 198 against. Only 11 Republican lawmaker voted to begin debate on the measure while 181 voted against. Among Democrats, the votes were 209 in favor and 17 against.

Leaders of both parties have encouraged their members to support the plan.

Frank said lawmakers are in the difficult position of being called upon to prepare “for something that has not happened but that you think is going to happen.”

Under the plan, Treasury would focus on buying investments tied to the floundering housing market which has been battered by defaults and foreclosures.

The House on Thursday moved to force companies that sell or distribute prepaid calling cards to describe any fees associated with the cards on packaging and in advertising.

Declaring that the industry is “plagued by fraudulent and deceptive business practices” the legislation requires disclosure of all terms, conditions and fees.

The cards are typically sold in convenience stores and neighborhood markets. Buyers are promised a certain number of minutes for $2, $5 or $10. Providers have been criticized for providing fewer minutes than advertised.

Bill sponsor Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., says studies indicate some card companies provide only 60 percent of minutes promised.

Some calling cards deduct minutes when the call is not connected while others cut off calls after a few minutes so the consumer must redial and again be subjected to a connection charge.

“This is just a good consumer protection bill,” Engel said Thursday, prior to the vote. “And it has to be federal because if you have a hodgepodge of states all with different laws, it really doesn’t work. You really need something uniform.”

Card providers often target immigrants who may use them to call relatives in their home countries. They are also used by U.S. soldiers stationed overseas and their families.

The bill requires card sellers to clearly describe any fees and limitations. It also requires the name of the service provider be displayed as well as a customer service telephone number.

The bill makes it unlawful for a service provider to supply fewer minutes than advertised. The legislation gives the Federal Trade Commission enforcement authority.

The Senate is considering a similar bill.

The financial crisis has turned into a tryout of sorts for the next president, an unexpected chance for Barack Obama and John McCain to shine — or stumble — just as most voters are deciding whom to back.

At times like these, when the real world intrudes on the carefully controlled campaigns, the spotlight shines even brighter on the presidential candidates. Their responses and postures may tell voters more about how they would act if elected than allegations of lies in advertising and quips about lipstick on pigs.

Both have got some work to do.

“People are confused, they’re scared and they’re angry, and neither of these guys is providing the security, maturity and experience to be able to calm those fears,” says Joe Gaylord, a Republican consultant. “If these candidates can rise out of their campaign mode and get into the president-of-all-the-country mode, people would feel more comfortable.”

The trick for each is not to look like he’s trying to score cheap political points off a crisis.

Last month, Russia’s invasion of Georgia provided a taste of how outside events can affect the presidential race. McCain seemed to hit his stride more quickly than Obama. In the financial meltdown, the opposite has been true.

Between now and Nov. 4, any number of other domestic or foreign events could intervene. For now, all attention has swung to the financial crisis that has spread worldwide. Despite Friday’s major actions by the federal government, even more economic troubles could be ahead, putting additional pressure on both Obama and McCain to map out solutions and prove they can handle adversity.

Both men are treading carefully as they use the Wall Street chaos not only to sell their economic plans but also to try to sound and act presidential before a nervous nation seeking leadership.

On Friday, Obama struck a stately stance as he acknowledged “difficult days” and said: “This is not the time for fear or panic. This is a time for resolve and for leadership. I know we can steer ourselves out of this crisis. That’s who we are. That’s what we’ve always done as Americans.”

After fumbling earlier in the week, McCain’s remarks had a more partisan edge. He claimed Obama “profited from this system of abuse and scandal” — even as he said: “It took members of both parties to get America into this mess, and it will take all of us, working together, to lead the way out.”

For now at least, the campaigns have returned to issues and substance after weeks of clashes over personalities and characters. Each candidate has accused the other of lying in campaign commercials, and there was a dispute over whether Obama was insulting GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin when he used the phrase putting “lipstick on a pig.”

“The real world was always going to re-exert itself because there are big problems,” said Bob Shrum, a Democratic veteran of several presidential campaigns. “Voters were having a lark but now they’re saying to themselves, what’s going happen to me and my life and my family in the next four years, and who is best to lead the country.”

Thus, mistakes are magnified.

Take McCain.

As markets tumbled Monday following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the takeover of Merrill Lynch, the Arizona senator — who has acknowledged that economics is not his strongest suit — made his oft-repeated assertion that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” Democrats swiftly assailed him, tagging him as out of touch and a continuation of President Bush.

McCain has spent the days since trying to explain what he meant and, with a more dire tone, letting voters know that he feels their pain. Now, he’s calling the financial woes “one of the most severe crises in modern times,” says he would fire the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman if he were president, and advocates creating a special trust to help strengthen weak institutions.

All week, McCain has struggled to square his current calls for tighter regulation of financial markets with his decades-old support of deregulation.

Obama, meanwhile, has smoothly hit his main points, empathizing with working-class people and blaming Washington.

He huddled with a team of seasoned economic advisers in Florida on Friday, and had planned to outline a series of prescriptions. But he emerged from the meeting to announce he would hold off for now in deference to those dealing directly with the crisis, saying their work should be “unimpeded by partisan wrangling.”

The candidates’ roles were reversed in August when Russia sent troops and tanks into the former Soviet state of Georgia.

That overseas event ricocheted off the U.S. presidential campaign, as foreign relations and national security — historically Republican strengths — rose to the surface.

McCain quickly took a hardline stand against Russia, seeking to show prowess in dealing with an international crisis.

Obama was initially cautious. He called for diplomacy and restraint on all sides.

Republicans chastised him for not sounding tough enough, and Obama labored to find the right balance.

A few days later, his position hardened markedly as he called for a Russian cease-fire and said, “Now is the time for action — not just words.”

That situation reverberated on the campaign trail for about a week.

There’s no formula for how long a current event remains, well, a current part of the campaign.

And, it’s hard to predict just how big an event has to be for candidates to care.

Wednesday’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, for instance, hardly registered. Both candidates simply issued statements.

In 2004, war and terrorism were injected into the campaign’s final weekend — a videotaped message from Osama bin Laden surfaced and eight U.S. Marines died in Iraq. Bush barely beat Democrat John Kerry.

And, forty years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson stopped bombing North Vietnam and pressed for peace negotiations — just days before voters narrowly chose Republican Richard Nixon over Democrat Hubert Humphrey.

There are six weeks left to go.

With Hurricane Gustav spinning toward landfall, lobbyists, corporations and industry groups are scrambling to put a solemn face on their glitzy GOP convention parties and still revel with big donors, delegates and members of Congress.

Few party hosts outright canceled their receptions and galas this week. Instead, some atoned by tapping well-heeled and not-so-well-heeled partygoers for contributions toward hurricane relief for Gulf Coast states.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain called for only essential opening-day convention activities on Monday. And while speeches were canceled, most of the hot-ticket parties appeared ready to go on with their shows.

“We could have canceled, but talk about a waste of resources,” said Frank Coleman, senior vice president at the Distilled Spirits Council, which was co-hosting a party with the Daimler Co. and The Hill newspaper.

The council was among the first to consider the fundraising option. Coleman said hosts began to keep an eye on potential hurricane weather patterns last week. With the help of a co-sponsor who knew the director of the Minnesota Red Cross, the fundraising deal was sealed. The party, originally billed as the Spirits of Minneapolis, was changed to the Spirits of the Gulf Coast.

“We had paid for catering, paid for the venue — everything was paid for,” Coleman said. “This is putting it to good use.”

The McCain campaign was asking other party sponsors to do the same. The campaign itself planned to turn it’s own reception thanking fundraisers of the party’s Victory ‘08 fund into a Gulf money raising event.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said the Arizona senator wanted to use “all the generous people who are here for a political convention and see if we can turn them into charitable fundraisers.”

Convention parties serve multiple purposes as it is. Special interests and their lobbyists can find a relaxed moment to bend a congressman’s ear over legislation. Fundraisers for the party or the presidential candidate can use tickets to the hottest events to reward their top donors. And hosts can earn goodwill chits that can help with special access down the road.

Turning parties into fundraisers may help as an antidote to awkward, if not embarrassing, images of Republican merrymaking while a disaster revisits the Gulf Coast.

“All donors understand the stakes,” said John Feehery, a Republican consultant and former aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. “This is not about taking care of donors, but about taking care of the country — and reputations.”

Among the party organizers planning to offer hurricane relief was the lobbying firm of Kearsarge Global Advisors, which was holding a welcoming cocktail party Sunday at the W Hotel in Minneapolis. The firm told its guests that it was donating the same amount of money spent on the reception to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.

Monday’s “Political Chicks a Go Go” party sponsored by Lifetime Networks, Rock the Vote and the conservative women’s group RightNOW! planned to collect charitable donations at the door.

The Distilled Spirits council and its party sponsors planned to match the contributions made by party guests.

Whether hosts of all the parties will follow suit is unclear. AT&T, for instance, was sponsoring or hosting a number of parties, including one Sunday for the Republican Main Street Partnership, a leading voice of GOP moderates in Congress. It also was a sponsor of a “Texas Honky Tonk” party featuring country music artist John Rich and a “Young guns” reception on Tuesday

Still unchanged was a Monday concert sponsored by the Service Employees International Union designed to counter the Republican message. That four-hour “Take Back Labor Day” show includes singer-songwriter Steve Earle, English folk musician Billy Bragg, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, hip hop artist Mos Def, and Earle’s wife Allison Moorer.

The Creative Coalition, a nonprofit group that connects artists with policy issues, was joining with Target for a concert Wednesday featuring the Charlie Daniels Band. Donor packages to the coalition ranged from $100,000 (25 tickets to the concert) to $10,000

President Bush is dispatching Vice President Dick Cheney to Georgia, setting up a high-ranking diplomatic mission to an ally reeling from war.

The White House announced Monday that Cheney will head abroad on Sept. 2 for stops in three former Soviet Republics — Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine — plus Italy.

“The president felt it was important to have the vice president consult with allies in the region on our common security interests,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Monday.

The vice president’s office described Cheney’s mission in similarly broad terms, and called it a chance to reiterate the U.S. commitment to its allies.

Indeed, Cheney’s presence in the war zone is a clear sign to Russia of the U.S. resolve behind Georgia after the small country was pummeled by a Russian military response.

Cheney’s office has used tough rhetoric against the former Cold War foe, saying that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered.” The Pentagon has ruled out a military response.

Cheney’s trip was in the works before the war erupted in Georgia on Aug. 7, but clearly takes on heightened significance as a result of it.

Cheney will hold talks in Georgia with President Mikhail Saakashvili, and will meet with the respective presidents of the other countries he is visiting.

The news comes as Russia’s parliament voted unanimously Monday to urge the country’s president to recognize the independence of Georgia’s two breakaway regions, a move likely to stoke further tensions between Moscow and the small Caucasus nation’s Western allies.

The war erupted Aug. 7 as Georgia launched a massive artillery barrage targeting the separatist province of South Ossetia. Russian forces repelled the offensive and attacked deep into Georgia, taking crucial positions across the small former Soviet republic.

Russia pulled the bulk of its troops and tanks out Friday under a cease-fire brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, but built up its forces in and around South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another separatist region. It also left military posts inside Georgia proper.

Bush has been adamant that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are part of Georgia.

Russia’s attack and its actions after the cease-fire have caused serious strains in relations with the West, and heightened fears in the young Eastern European democracies. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a quick trip to Georgia earlier this month to help seal the cease-fire agreement.

Cheney’s trip was originally driven by his plans to attend the Ambrosetti forum in Italy, an annual meeting of world leaders. The Georgia and Azerbaijan stops have been planned for some time. The visit to Ukraine was recently added.

Ukraine, like Georgia, has angered Moscow by seeking closer ties with the West and membership in the NATO military alliance. While siding with Georgia, Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that Moscow’s quick military victory exposed their nation’s own vulnerability.

President Bush has expressed solidarity with Pakistan, which has been wracked by political turmoil and suicide bombings that killed dozens of people.

From his vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush called Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Separately, Bush called former President Pervez Musharraf, who was forced from power this week. The White House says Bush thanked Musharraf for his efforts in the democratic transition of Pakistan, as well as the fight against al-Qaida and extremist groups.

Aides said Thursday that Bush expressed his sympathies to Gilani for the recent terrorist attacks, and that the president and prime minister reaffirmed their mutual support for going after extremists.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday he sees no need to invoke American military force in the war between Russia and Georgia and that U.S.-Russian relations could suffer for years if Moscow doesn’t retreat. The White House said it was ignoring Russian “bluster” about Georgia never regaining disputed border regions.

At the same time, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Paris issuing another urgent call on Russia to honor a previously announced cease-fire with Georgia as she was getting ready to bring the formal agreement to Tbilisi for signing Friday by the president of Georgia, a democratic former Soviet republic now strongly aligned with Washington.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who has been leading Western efforts to stop the fighting, said the documents are “intended to consolidate the cease-fire.”

At the Pentagon, Gates described a broad humanitarian effort for Georgians displaced or harmed by the fighting. He said there isn’t any need for U.S. fighting forces there, although the relief effort is being run by the U.S. military. At his side for a news conference, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright said the military assesses that Russia is “generally complying” with the truce that called for its withdrawal from the hostilities.

He said Russian forces appeared to be forming up in Georgia in preparation for withdrawal.

“It’s difficult at the tactical level to know each and every engagement in each town,” Cartwright said, “but, generally, the forces are starting to move.”

Gates said the Bush administration last year started talks with Russia that officials hoped would develop a long-term strategic partnership. The idea was to give a backbone to the U.S. relationship with Russia across military, diplomatic and economic spheres. But Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the weeklong fighting that followed has called that into question, he said.

Gates told reporters he believes Russia has decided “to punish Georgia for daring to try to integrate with the West.”

Asked what he thought the Russians are hoping to gain from the fight, Gates said he thinks they are trying to redress what they regard as the many concessions forced on them amid the breakup of the former Soviet Union. They want to “reassert their international status,” he said.

Also Thursday, the administration said it will ignore “bluster” from Russia about the future of separatist regions at the heart of the conflict.

“The United States of America stands strongly, as the president of France just said, for the territorial integrity of Georgia,” Rice said following a meeting with Sarkozy.

Russia and Georgia have agreed to a truce but Russian tanks and troops remain. Rice was heading to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi with the document and had no plans to visit Moscow.

The pact fleshes out a French-brokered agreement, worked out this week, giving Russian peacekeepers the express right to patrol beyond two disputed border regions at the heart of the conflict.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the pact is not finalized, said there are important clarifications still to be made and that the U.S. would support additional powers for the Russian peacekeepers only if they were limited, well defined and temporary.

There were Russian peacekeepers in the two disputed regions before fighting began, and those forces would remain. The difference now would be that the peacekeepers could venture beyond the regions if need be.

The official said Russia demanded the expanded mandate for its peacekeepers.

The truce plan was agreed to by both sides but not yet in full force, and it left some details vague.

Russia’s foreign minister declared earlier Thursday that the world “can forget about” Georgia’s territorial integrity, strongly suggesting that Russia could absorb the regions where it has supported separatist movements in a goad to Georgia since the election there of a strongly pro-American president.

“I would consider that to be bluster from the foreign minister of Russia,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. “We will ignore it.”

Russia’s president met in the Kremlin with the leaders of the separatist provinces, another signal that Moscow could absorb the regions.

At the State Department, spokesman Robert Wood expressed concern over reports that Russia is deliberately sabotaging Georgian military infrastructure. “We are very concerned about these reports; it is a serious situation,” Wood said.

The facilities were not identified by American officials, who said the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi was investigating.

Of the relief efforts, Wood said more than $2 million in U.S. humanitarian assistance had been delivered to Georgia and that three convoys had transported 202 Americans from Georgia to Armenia, the third one carrying 32 Americans.

Explosions were heard near Gori on Thursday as a Russian troop withdrawal from the strategic city seemed to collapse and a fragile cease-fire appeared even more shaky.

Meanwhile, the United States poured aid into the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in a Pentagon mission directly challenging Russia’s military moves to retake territory in the former Soviet republic.

Two aid flights were carrying cots, blankets and medicine for refugees displaced by the weeklong fighting. The shipment arrived on a C-17 military plane, an illustration of the close U.S.-Georgia military cooperation that has angered Russia.

The United States government is reeling from the near collapse of its closest friend among the former Soviet republics, a strategic Black Sea nation that is an emerging pathway for undeveloped energy reserves and that has worn its zeal for America and the West as a badge of honor.

As the United States mustered humanitarian aid for Georgia, President Bush demanded that Russia end all military activity inside its neighbor and withdraw all troops sent in recent days onto Georgian territory.

All this appeared designed to answer criticism that Bush has not done enough to stand by his 2005 pledge, made from the center of Tbilisi before tens of thousands of citizens, to “stand with” the people of Georgia.

The president postponed Thursday’s planned start of a two-week Texas vacation for a couple of days to monitor developments.