Washington - US legislators were hearing a changed tune on on Thursday as business and retired communities made a desperate last -minute push for final approval of a sweetened US financial rescue by the House of Representatives on Friday.

Business leaders met with US President George W Bush Friday morning at the White House, while the US Chamber of Commerce made an urgent appeal on its website for members to contact their legislators "and urge them to support this vital piece of legislation."

It was imperative that the House "remove uncertainty and .. stem the turmoil that has plagued financial marekts in recent weeks," the Chamber said, referring to the credit freeze that has affected their ability to not only grow but to just conduct day to day business.

The AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), alarmed at the decline in stock share prices at a time when older people have most of their retirement funds in the markets, said it was a "critical moment."

"Send an urgent message to your members of Congress. Tell them to put partisanship aside and take action now to address this crisis!" the AARP warned.

All last week, a flood of opposition from angry constituents warned against passage of the 700-billion-dollar plan for the government to buy up damaged mortgage assets, charging that it would only bail out Wall Street fat cats.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, said that 85,000 of the 95,000 messages she received were negative.

On Monday, the US House of Representatives stunningly rebuffed Bush and their own Democratic and Republican leaders by voting down the plan and sending the three major stock share indices plunging more than 7 per cent.

In two days of harried negotiations, the US Senate came up with a sweetened plan designed to appeal to resistant House Republicans, and passed it Wednesday night.

After the meeting with business leaders at the White House, an exhausted- and grim-looking Bush told reporters that the credit freeze was the main topic of the meeting.

"If you're runnin' a small company and you need to make payroll or you need to make sure you got inventory to be able to sell a product or you want to expand and hire someone, you need to have credit," Bush said.

With banks tightening credit lines, that money has dried up, meaning "jobs are in jeopardy," Bush said.

"A lot of people are watching the House of Representatives to determine if they will be able to act positively on a bill that 's been improved," he said. "This has gone way beyond New York and Wall Street."

He said that "hard-working people" are worried about their "savings, jobs and houses."

"The House of Representatives must listen to these voices and get this bill passed," Bush said.

The sweetened version includes a year-long increase in government- backed guarantees for bank deposits from 100,000 dollars to 250,000 dollars, extensions of tax credits for renewable energy and small businesses as well as changes to the Alternative Minimum Tax that hits the incomes of middle-class Americans. (dpa)