Bush plans 9/11 prime-time address

President George Bush will make a televised prime-time address from the Oval Office on Monday to mark the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the US.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the Washington administration had requested network time for the address at 9.01pm.

The address is expected to run from 16 to 18 minutes, he said.

The speech will come after Bush visits each of the attack sites, in New York, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Defence Department, where terrorist hijackers used commercial airliners as weapons to kill nearly 3,000 people.

Snow said Bush’s address would not be a political speech or a charge to Congress for action.

Rather, he said, it would be reflective of what September 11 had meant and “how we move ahead as a country in making use of the lessons of September 11”.

“It will have a note of optimism as well as sobriety about what we’ve been through,” Snow said.