Crowds lined the streets around the courtroom, but quickly dispersed.In a statement read by his older son Jason, Simpson pledged to "pursue as my primary goal in life the killers" of his ex-wife "They are out there somewhere Whatever it takes to bring them in ... I will find them somehow."Simpson, who did not testify in his own defence but said early on he was "100 per cent" not guilty, said: "I am relieved that this part of the incredible nightmare that occurred is over. My first obligation is to my young children who will be raised in the way that Nicole and I had planned ... I would not, could not, and did not kill anyone." Sydney, nine, and Justin, seven, are currently in the care of Nicole Brown's parents.President Bill Clinton said: "The jury heard the evidence and rendered its verdict Our system of justice requires respect for their decision.

At this moment our thoughts and prayers should be with the families of the victims." Mr Cochran said Simpson was "ecstatic and wants to get on with his life". In his closing statements to the jury Mr Cochran was blamed for inflaming the race issue that threatened to explode throughout the trial, but he turned the post-trial focus on the prosecution's chronology for the murders. The defence argued that Simpson simply did not have time to commit them.But asked whether race had overcome the facts, Mr Coch-ran said: "Race plays a part in everything in America and we need to understand that ... This was a real heck of a trial."The aftermath of a case that was fought out for the TV cameras saw a series of duelling news conferences. While the defence "dream team" began with a prayer of thanks and at one point burst into laughter, prosecutors looked blank and grim.District Attorney Gil Garcetti, up for re-election in 1996, said he was profoundly disappointed and angry, and suggested that the jury's snap decision was "based on emotions that overcame the reason".The deliberations of the jury of eight black women, two white women and one Hispanic and one black man, who had been poker-faced through the trial, remained a mystery.

They asked Judge Lance Ito to preserve their anonymity, and asked not to speak to either press or the attorneys.Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Darden, who in the courtroom had appeared bitterly offended by the defence's playing the race card, said he accepted the jury's verdict but added: "We came here in search of justice. You will have to be the judge of whether any of us found it today."Simpson, 48, faced a possible life prison term without parole if convicted of first-degree murder in the 12 June 1994 killings. It may not be long now before he attempts to cash in on his acquittal. Even before yesterday's verdicts, intermediaries for Simpson had filed formal patent requests with the US government to use the OJ Simpson name on products including calendars, children's toys, place mats and, above all, a new line of OJ Simpson clothing.Simpson is also rumoured to be considering giving a post-trial interview to pay-per-view television in the US with CNN's star interviewer Larry King. The former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, following his release from prison this summer after being convicted of rape, staged a comeback fight on pay-per-view that netted him an instant $25m.. DONALD MACINTYRE Political Editor Tony Blair yesterday sought to wrest the high ground of patriotism and national unity from the Tories in a crusading appeal to voters to put their faith in a "new generation" and give him a mandate to make Britain "the young country of my generation's dreams".The Labour leader dramatised his pledge to build a "new economy of the future" by announcing a deal with British Telecom to allow it into the competitive cable entertainment market in return for linking every school, college, hospital and library in the country to the information superhighway for free.But he also sent a tangible thrill through the Labour conference at Brighton by making it clear that his ambition as the first prime minister born since Second World War would be to lead a Labour government that did not "dazzle for a moment and end in disillusion" but would "govern for a generation and change Britain for good".Passionately proclaiming the "moral purpose" of his own socialism, he promised a party still reeling from the pace of internal reform since he became leader 16 months ago: "I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party.

I came into politics to change the country".In a speech highlighting a series of policy pledges of social and technological innovation, he declared that Labour would cast out old divisions and prejudices and create "a nation for all the people built by all the people". Mr Blair remembered how many of the veterans he had encountered lining the Mall during the VJ Day anniversary celebrations had shouted to him to "get the Tories out" He said: "These are our people They love this country, just as we do. It is because they love this country that they look to us to change it.''Having brought the conference to its feet at the outset by bringing an emotional Lady Wilson - widow of the former prime minister - to the front of the platform, he then went on to invite inevitable comparisons with the late Labour premier's famous 1963 "white heat of technology" speech when the party was last on the verge of an electoral breakthrough. The new technological and economic challenges, Mr Blair insisted, needed a change in the basis of "this country's thinking for the last 100 years".In addition to the deal to free British telecommunications companies in 2002 from the restrictions preventing competition with mainly US cable companies, Mr Blair announced that his education spokesman, David Blunkett, would negotiate with computer companies to secure a public-private partnership that would provide every pupil with access to a laptop computer.Declaring that "education is the best economic policy there is", he pledged a pounds 60m plan to cut primary school classes to 30 and a new high-tech NHS scheme to link GPs with regional "centres of excellence" pioneered by the world famous - and Labour-supporting - obstetrician, Robert Winston.However, in a distinctly un-Blairite intervention last night the egalitarian former deputy leader, Roy Hattersley, told the Tribune rally that public schools should be abolished.Mr Blair pledged to attack long-term unemployment, outlining plans to bring single parents into the labour market, and to end the "stigma of means- testing" by a pensions guarantee based on a mix of public and private provision. There was the faintest echo of John F Kennedy in the 42-year- old Labour leader's repeated references to the fitness of "my generation" to lead Britain into a "new age". And in a passage which bore some of the hallmarks of Neil Kinnock - to whom Mr Blair paid fulsome tribute as the pioneer moderniser - he declared that British society should be such that "your child in distress is my child, your parent ill and in pain is my parent, your friend unemployed or helpless, my friend, your neighbour, my neighbour.

I am my brother's keeper".Mr Blair appeared last night to have united the vast majority of his party behind his leadership, although he warned union leaders he might have to say no as well as yes on issues such as public sector pay.. "My name is Cherie. I am a mum and a barrister and I have recently become Queen's Counsel, which is very smart." That's the trouble with going to church these days - the minister might ask you to stand up in front of the congregation and say who you are. It happened on Sunday to Cherie Booth, who added her third role as an afterthought: "I am also married to this man here." Ever since Glenys joined Neil Kinnock on the Brighton platform in 1983, to throw roses to the delegates who had just elected him, the leader's wife has had an awkward place in Labour's unwritten constitution. Before that the leader's wife played a passive, pastoral role Harold Wilson's wife, Mary, wrote poetry James Callaghan's wife, Audrey, took up good causes.