WASHINGTON - President Bush said on Monday he assumed the deadly bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali were the work of the al Qaeda network and appeared to be part of a new pattern of attacks that he vowed to stop.

"See, these are the kinds of people that, if they go unchallenged and don't feel like there's going to be any consequences, they will continue to kill. These are nothing but coldblooded killers," Bush said at an impromptu question-and-answer session on the White House South Lawn.

He cited the Bali bombings, the attack on a French oil supertanker off the coast of Yemen and attacks on U.S. Marines in Kuwait as part of what appeared to be a concerted approach by the organization blamed by the United States for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"The attack in Bali appears to be an al Qaeda-type terrorist -- definitely a terrorist attack, whether it's al Qaeda-related or not, I would assume it is," Bush said.

"And, therefore, it does look like a pattern of attacks that the enemy, albeit on the run, is trying to once again frighten and kill freedom-loving people."

The attack on nightclubs packed with foreigners at Bali's Kuta Beach killed at least 181 people over the weekend.

The Bush administration has been worried for some time about the possibility of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, the world's most-populous Muslim nation, and has been pressing its leaders to crack down on radical Islam, U.S. officials said.

"It's not that they're not cooperating. Our view is more could have been done," said one U.S. official.

Bush said he had just spoken by telephone to Australian Prime Minister John Howard to express condolences at the loss of Australian lives in Bali and that he soon would speak to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

'BRING THEM TO JUSTICE'

"I want to make it clear to her that we need to work together to find those who murdered all those innocent people and bring them to justice," Bush said. "And I hope I hear the resolve of a leader that recognizes any time terrorists take hold in a country it is going to weaken the country itself."

Bush, who has been demanding that Iraq surrender suspected weapons of mass destruction, said he believed the United States could handle Iraq and the war on terrorism at the same time.

Some Democrats have said during the Iraq debate that the United States first should rout out al Qaeda followers.

"I think they're both equally important. I mean, they're both dangerous," said Bush. "We will fight, if need be, the war on terror on two fronts. We've got plenty of capacity to do so."

At a Republican political event in Dearborn, Michigan, Bush said he suspected that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein wanted to team up with al Qaeda. He kept up his hard-line stance that Iraq disarm or face a possible military attack.

"This is a man who we know has had connections with al Qaeda," Bush said. "This is a man who, in my judgement, would like to use al Qaeda as a forward army."

The Bush administration has accused Iraq of providing safe haven to al Qaeda fighters who fled Afghanistan, and of possibly providing chemical weapons training to the group's members. But it has made public no concrete evidence of direct ties between the secular rulers of Baghdad and the militant Islamists of al Qaeda.

'SADDAM HUSSEIN MUST DISARM'

"I hope we never use one military troop in Iraq," Bush said. "But for the sake of the peace and security of the United States, Saddam Hussein must disarm, or the United States, with friends and allies, will disarm him," Bush said to applause.

Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also said the Bali, Kuwait and Yemen attacks appeared to be part of a pattern.

"I think most people believe it's an al Qaeda-related group," Shelby said of the Bali bombing.

While it had not been determined definitively who was behind the attacks, it looked like the work of an al Qaeda-related group, a U.S. intelligence official added.

"We haven't come to any final conclusions, but it's clearly the work of a sophisticated terrorist organization of which there are only a few, there are some in that region that are associated with al Qaeda like JI (Jemaah Islamiah)," the official told Reuters.

In his Washington remarks, Bush shrugged off a memo cited by Qatar's al Jazeera television attributed to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whose whereabouts are unknown a year after the United States bombed his mountain hideaways in Afghanistan.

"We don't know whether bin Laden is alive or dead. You know, they keep floating supposed letters and radio broadcasts. We do know that al Qaeda's still dangerous, and while we've made good progress, there is a lot more work to do," he said.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria)