U.S. President George W. Bush concluded his speech Friday to mark the first anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led war on Iraq with remarks on the diary written by a Japanese diplomat killed there in November.

"With Afghanistan and Iraq showing the way, we are confident that freedom will lift the sights and hopes of millions in a greater Middle East," Bush said in the White House speech. "One man who believed in our cause was a Japanese diplomat named Katsuhiko Oku.

"In his diary he described his pride in the cause he had joined," Bush said.

Oku, 45, a counselor at the Japanese Embassy in London, was sent to Iraq in April 2003 to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority. He was killed Nov. 29 in an ambush by unknown assailants in northern Iraq.