The capture of Saddam Hussein has lifted Americans'approval ratings for President George W.Bush,latest polls published on Wednesday showed.

The New York Times/CBS News polls,conducted during the days before and after the capture last Saturday,showed Bush's approval rating jumped to 58percent after Saddam was captured,from 52percent,and the number of Americans who disapproved of his performance fell to 33percent,from 40percent.

The two nationwide telephone polls were taken back to back,one going from Wednesday to Saturday and the other Sunday to Monday.

Forty-seven of respondents said the war was going well for the United States in the poll that ended Saturday night,and the number jumped to 64percent in the second poll.The first poll found that 47percent of Americans disapproved of the way Bush washandling the foreign policy,and that number dropped to 38percentin the second poll.

Nearly half the respondents said that they believed that the United States,with the capture of Saddam,had won the war,but a majority said that the war was not over yet and that they expectedUS troops to stay in Iraq for years.

Before Saddam's capture,the number of Americans who said the war was a mistake jumped 19percentage points since last April,to43percent.It slipped back to 30percent in the second poll.

Findings of the first poll showed 56percent of respondents said the nation was heading in the wrong direction,compared with just 39percent who said it was on the right track.The second poll found the number of Americans who said the nation was headingin the right direction rising to 49percent,and 43percent said things were going awry.

The first poll had a sample of 1,057adults with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points,and the second poll had a sample of 635adults,with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.