BAGHDAD, 3 May 2003 — The US military said yesterday that two more most-wanted figures from Saddam Hussein’s former regime were in custody, as US President George W. Bush declared the major fighting in Iraq and the war was all but over.

Bush said the war in Iraq yielded “one victory in a war on terror.”

But US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that Iraq remained a dangerous place, as Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Syria to press Washington’s postwar agenda in the Middle East and push Damascus to end its support for Arab militants.

In Washington, a US official said the Bush administration had chosen Paul Bremer, a former diplomat who headed the State Department’s counterterrorism efforts, to be the civilian administrator guiding reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

The official said Bremer would supplant retired Gen. Jay Garner as the top US civilian official in the country.

The US military announced that two more of the 55 Iraqis on its list of most-wanted former regime leaders were in coalition custody, bringing the number of those detained to 17.

The latest were Abd Al-Tawab Mullah Huwaysh, deputy prime minister and director of the Office of Military Industrialization and number 16 on the list, and Taha Muhyl Al-Din Maruf, vice president and a member of the Revolutionary Command Council and number 42 on the list, US Central Command said.

The US military provided no further information about their capture, and the fate of Saddam, number one on the list, remained unknown.

The announcement came after Bush hailed the triumph of the United States and its allies in Iraq in a carefully choreographed victory address from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier as it steamed home from the Gulf.

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed,” Bush told some 5,000 sailors aboard the nuclear-powered carrier.

But he did not formally declare the end of the war and warned that “difficult work” lay ahead in the US campaign against terrorism that followed the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

“Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups, and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction, is a grave danger to the civilized world, and will be confronted,” he said.

Powell meanwhile arrived in Syria for key talks with a regime that Washington has also accused of developing weapons of mass destruction and of harboring fugitive members of Saddam’s elite. Powell said he would press the Syrian regime to address deep US concerns about its support for Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

While Bush declared major hostilities to be over in Iraq, Rumsfeld warned the country remained far from safe, after anti-US sentiment spilled over into violence in the tense Iraqi city of Fallujah.

“It would be a terrible mistake to think that Iraq is a fully secure, fully pacified environment,” he said on a stopover in London, where he separately discussed postwar Iraq with his British counterpart Geoff Hoon, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Jordan’s King Abdallah.

Iraqis are dismayed at the postwar breakdown in security and angry about shortages of water, power and other basic services.

“Water at the moment is critical,” said Veronique Taveau, spokeswoman for the UN Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq. Securing food warehouses was also a high priority.

Taveau was one of 21 UN international staff who returned to Baghdad on Thursday to assess humanitarian needs.

International aid agencies appealed yesterday for the United Nations to be given a key role urgently in rebuilding Iraq, where they said disease, hunger and anarchy were spreading.

Britain and the United States have dragged their heels in defining what role the world body should play in postwar Iraq.

“It is essential that the United Nations have a central role in facilitating the creation of a transitional Iraqi authority,” said a joint statement from Oxfam, Islamic Relief, Caritas, Cafod, Christian Aid, Action Aid and Save the Children.

A vessel with 14,000 tonnes of rice docked in the southern port of Umm Qasr, the largest to arrive by sea and the first shipment by the UN World Food Program since the war began.