BATON ROUGE, La. (Reuters) - President Bush will share a "clear strategy" for guiding the future of Iraq in a Monday night speech intended to convince a world television audience that he is in command of the situation there, the White House said on Friday.

Bush, whose election-year job approval ratings have been dragged to new lows by violence and scandal in Iraq, will address an audience at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, at 8 p.m. EDT, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

"He realizes, as most Americans do, that we have difficult challenges ahead," Duffy told reporters traveling with the Republican president to Louisiana for a commencement address and a private fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee.

"The president looks forward on Monday evening to discussing with the American people and with a global audience a clear strategy on how we need to move forward," he said. "We hope that Americans will take the opportunity to listen.

"It's an important speech. It's an important time."

Although the White House typically asks U.S. television networks to carry important addresses, Duffy said the administration has made no such request for Monday's speech. He said the White House expects it to be carried worldwide on cable stations.

"When the president of the United States speaks it's not only the United States that listens," he said.

The address comes as Bush finds himself in a tight election race against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and growing doubts about his administration's lofty objectives of establishing a democracy in Iraq as part of a controversial plan to foster political reform across the Middle East.

With the June 30 deadline for transferring sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government less than six weeks away, spreading violence and a deepening Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal prompted Bush to visit Capitol Hill this week to reassure jittery Republican lawmakers.

COMMENCEMENT PROTEST

In a 16-minute commencement address at Louisiana State University on Friday, Bush vowed to "complete the mission for which so many have served and sacrificed.

"We have a historical opportunity: the establishment of a peaceful and democratic Iraq at the heart of the Middle East, which will remove a danger, strike a blow against terrorism and make America and the world more secure," he said in an address that drew repeated standing ovations.

Louisiana, an industrial state with a large Roman Catholic population and a history of supporting Democrats, could be a problem for Bush in November despite his comfortable win here in 2000. Analysts say the president is mainly vulnerable on the economic front due to a loss of local manufacturing jobs.

On Friday, the president faced an unorganized protest by dozens of LSU faculty members who remained silent and seated in the commencement audience as he was introduced.