US observers award Powell good marks

WASHINGTON - There was not an Adlai Stevenson moment, but American Secretary of State Colin Powell successfully took the United Nations Security Council step by step through a picture of Iraqi deception on banned weapons programmes, US experts said yesterday.

With Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet seated behind him, Powell used satellite photos to show before and after shots of suspected chemical weapons facilities and played recordings of intercepted conversations between Iraqi military officials to make his points.

The presentation lacked the irrefutable visual evidence former US ambassador Stevenson presented to the Security Council in 1962 when he showed aerial photographs exposing Soviet missile deployments in Cuba, experts said.

But they claimed it built a clear case of Iraq's attempts to deceive UN weapons inspectors and would probably sway some people on the fence to the US viewpoint.

In Baghdad, a senior member of Parliament dismissed the evidence as "lies and fabrications which have no material proof".

"They are aimed at creating a pretext for military aggression against Iraq," said Salem al-Kubaisi, head of the Arab and foreign relations committee at Iraq's National Assembly.

The US has been amassing forces in the Gulf to prepare for a possible war if Iraq does not rid itself of suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes.

Iraq insists it does not have those programmes.

Powell's performance in the high-stakes bid to win global support was "masterful", said Bruce Berkowitz, a senior analyst at RAND and a former CIA analyst.

"He showed patterns, he showed logic, and he framed the argument," he said.

Powell succeeded in using newly declassified intelligence to shift the issue from whether UN weapons inspectors were finding banned weapons to focus on signs that Iraq was not complying with UN resolutions requiring disarmament, Berkowitz said.

"The UN resolutions don't say let the inspectors in so they can find the smoking gun."

By using the intercepted conversations, Powell raised the question of why Iraqi individuals were talking about hiding material "when they should be revealing things", Berkowitz said.

Powell also revealed new information in making a case about possible al Qaeda ties to Iraq, saying members of a group associated with the terrorist network had been operating freely in Baghdad for eight months.

The US blames Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda for the September 11, 2001, attacks on America that killed about 3000 people.

"Iraq harbours a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenant," Powell said.

Zarqawi is connected with Ansar al-Islam, a group that operates in northern Iraq outside the control of Baghdad.

But Powell said Zarqawi spent two months in Baghdad last year for medical treatment and some members of his groups were now based in the Iraqi capital.

Iraq has denied any links to al Qaeda.

The terrorism piece of the presentation made stronger points than the Administration has done publicly in the past, but was not definitive, said Lawrence Korb, director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"It did not show clear and present danger.

"Everybody agrees Saddam is a bad guy," Korb added, but there was no "smoking gun" such as evidence showing Saddam gave a weapon to al Qaeda or possessed a chemical or biological weapon.

Korb concluded: "I think it moved the ball a little bit" among doubters toward the US viewpoint.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: Iraq