Powell says new data may have affected war decision: report

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Powell says new data may have affected war decision: report

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US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he does not know whether he would have recommended an invasion of Iraq if he had been told Iraq had no stockpiles of banned weapons, The Washingt on Post reported Tuesday.

Asked during an interview with the newspaper on Monday if he would have recommended an invasion knowing Iraq had no prohibited weapons, Powell said: "I don't know, because it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world."

The "absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get," he said.

Even without possessing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons,former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein intended to acquire them and tried to maintain the capability of producing them in case international sanctions were lifted, Powell said.

But he conceded that the administration's conviction that Hussein already had such weapons had made the case for war more urgent.

Powell spoke on the Iraq weapons issue for more than half of the hour-long interview, and tried to balance the administration's rationale for going to war with the reality that no weapons of mass destruction have been uncovered in Iraq, the report said.

Former chief US weapons inspectors David Kay told the Congress last week that Saddam Hussein did not have such weapons at the time of the US invasion. "It turns out we were all wrong, probably" about the Iraqi threat, he said.

Nonetheless, Powell said, history would ultimately judge that the war "was the right thing to do."

On Feb. 5 last year, Powell appeared before the United Nations Security Council and offered a forceful and detailed description of the US case that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.In that appearance, Powell told the council: "What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

Powell argued that Kay's testimony at the Congress was more supportive of the administration than many news accounts have portrayed. Kay "did say, with respect to stockpiles, we were wrong,terribly wrong," he said. "But he also came to other conclusions that deal, I think, with intent and capability which resulted in athreat the president felt he had to respond to."

The Bush administration launched the Iraq war in March last year, citing "grave and gathering danger" posed by Iraq's biological and chemical weapons.

Source: Xinhua

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