WASHINGTON -- Starting with his televised speech last night, President Bush's new effort to outline a better future for Iraq and bring international diplomacy to bear to try to stem its chaos will determine whether Iraq can be stabilized after the June 30 handover to an as-yet-unnamed Iraqi authority.

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Bush also has yet to convince wary U.S. voters that his Iraq plan will, as he said, "defeat this enemy and hold this hard-won ground for the realm of liberty."

The latest high-stakes draft resolution that the administration has begun circulating among United Nations diplomats has raised a few foreign eyebrows but no outcry such as the one Bush evoked over his go-it-alone strategy before the preemptive war he began more than a year ago. The proposal calls for the United Nations to recognize an interim government in Baghdad, endorse the U.S.-designated election timetable and reaffirm support for a multinational security force.

To the continued dismay of many, neither Bush's speech nor the U.N. resolution set a date for U.S. and other foreign troops to leave Iraq. Instead, he said that if more U.S. soldiers are needed, he'll send them.

Nor does the resolution state how much authority the still-unformed Iraqi interim government will have over Iraq's oil, its own soldiers, its border security or its rebuilding contractors. A U.N. vote is likely within two weeks, after U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi announces which Iraqis will serve in an interim regime to rule until Iraqis choose a new government in January.

The resolution itself also is unlikely to persuade more countries to offer fresh troops for Iraq, a potentially crucial element of the new effort to give the Iraq security force an international face rather than a primarily U.S. one.

"There's a growing unease in this country and in Congress about whether we have a plan for success in Iraq," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "Even those who have been stalwart supporters of the president's decision to invade Iraq now have many questions about how we make the transition to a peaceful and democratic country."

Bush maintained last night that Iraq is still a major front in the war on terror but that after June 30, U.S. soldiers will be a security force rather than an occupying force. Still, for the time being, most Iraqis are unlikely to see many changes or experience greater security.

It remains to be seen whether Bush's address to the nation last night before an enthusiastic audience of officers at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., will help his battle to convince voters that he's in charge of his own presidency after a string of recent polls finding that Americans don't see a clear Bush plan for bringing the Iraq situation to a successful conclusion.

"Did this [speech] prepare the American people for the fact that Iraqis might make different choices, that Iraq could devolve into a civil war, that what we're doing there is much less popular in Iraq than the president implies, and did he look at the downside rather than the upside?" said Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The answer is no."

Bush's one new announcement last night -- that, if the new interim Iraqi government agrees, the United States will build a new maximum-security prison and destroy the notorious Abu Ghraib, Saddam Hussein's torture chamber, where U.S. guards have also recently abused and sexually humiliated Iraqi prisoners -- came after more bad news for the administration. The Annenberg National Election Survey of the University of Pennsylvania found in a weeklong poll ending Sunday that 48 percent of Americans think U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib were "following orders from their commanders'' in their conduct with Iraqi prisoners.

Razing the prison, the refurbishing of which cost the United States several million dollars, along with the new prison building are intended to serve as a symbol to the world of how ashamed the United States is about the abuse.

But White House aides privately concede that Bush's standing abroad has been badly damaged by the scandal and the combat controversies. Thus, last night was the first in a series of presidential speeches aimed at explaining U.S. policy and undoing the damage.

This summer, Bush will be in France and Italy for World War II commemorations, in Ireland for a European Union meeting, in Turkey for a NATO session and host for an annual Group of Eight economic meeting at Sea Island, Ga.

The White House had begun to worry that Bush would be the target not only of major anti-war demonstrations but also of a painfully icy reception from foreign leaders because of his controversial unilateral foreign policy. His fresh intent to seek more international aid for the turnover in Baghdad aims to appeal to hostile critics abroad and mute U.S. voters' rising anxiety that Iraq is turning into a debacle.

Many Capitol Hill Republicans cheered Bush's speech, saying he was doing what his Democratic presidential rival, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, recommends -- internationalizing the Iraq effort -- and insisting that tactic will curb Kerry's appeal.But Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Bush must provide far more details about what will happen in Iraq -- and not just make speeches, but instead do the hard work of diplomacy year in and year out.