Climax of a 2-year fight for change; OBAMA INAUGURATION.

BARACK Obama's inauguration marked the culmination of a hard-fought two-year campaign for change and hope in a nation besieged by multiple wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

With his soaring rhetoric, celebrity status and optimistic message of "Yes we can", Mr Obama was greeted by a crowd of more than a million people chanting his name as he was presented as the nation's first black president.

The crowd, which stretched along the National Mall for as far as the eye could see, braved sub-zero temperatures and erupted into cheers and applause as a composed Mr Obama first walked into view, greeted by a sea of US flags.

At the end of a journey which started on February 10 2007, on the steps of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln spent a large part of his political career, Mr Obama placed his left hand on the same Bible as Mr Lincoln to become America's first black president as the clock struck 12 noon in Washington yesterday.

The scale of the occasion was unprecedented and Mr Obama has made history virtually every step of the way.

With his wife and children at his side, Mr Obama, who has stressed the need for urgent action in America, was so eager to start his presidency that he started repeating the words of the oath before it was time.

After a fierce campaign in which he kept his calm and confident persona as he was likened to the messiah-like leader of a cult and portrayed as a risky "foreigner" who exchanged "terrorist fist-bumps" with his wife Michelle, Mr Obama did not shy away from controversy as he became the nation's first African American commander in chief.

Using his middle name which attracted so much anger and criticism during his campaign, Barack Hussein Obama stepped forward on the West Front of the Capitol to lay his left hand on the same Bible that Mr Lincoln, whose Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery, used at his first inauguration in 1861.

Mr Obama confronted the issue of race, in a nation where segregation was practised in many Southern states until just decades ago, in a high-profile speech during his campaign and started his first term as president outside the US Capitol, which slaves helped build.

The 35-word oath of office, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, has been uttered by every president since George Washington - Mr Obama was one of 22 Democratic senators to vote against Mr Roberts' confirmation to the Supreme Court in 2005.

To the dismay of liberals, Mr Obama also invited conservative evangelical pastor Rick Warren - an opponent of gay rights - to give the inaugural invocation, a sign of his tolerance to those whose views differ from his own.

He declared that he would be the president of all America.

"We have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord," he said yesterday.

Under the Constitution, it was the clock - not the pomp, ceremony or oaths - that signalled the transfer of the office from the old president to the new one, and the end of the Bush era.

The 20th Amendment specifies that the terms of office of the president and vice president "shall end at noon on the 20th day of January... and the terms of their successors shall then begin".

CAPTION(S):

Goodbye from him... Bush and wife Laura head out of Washington