The Hindu : Powell casts doubts on stockpiles in Iraq

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 26, 2004

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International

Powell casts doubts on stockpiles in Iraq

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, JAN. 25. One day after the top CIA weapons hunter in Iraq, David Kay, stepped down asserting that he did not think that any stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction existed there, the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, is saying that it is an "open question" if such weapons stockpiles could be found in Iraq.

"The open question is how many stocks they had, if any, and if they had any, where did they go. And if they did not have any, then why was not that known beforehand," asked Mr. Powell who was on his way to Georgia to attend the inauguration of the President-elect, Mikhail Saakashvili.

One of the big questions that is being debated is the kind of intelligence information that was available to the U.S. President, George W Bush, in the run up to the war, especially as it pertained to the weapons of mass destruction. And Mr. Powell has consistently faced questions on the kind of material he had on hand prior to making that critical presentation to the United Nations last February.

Not many nations in the U.N. were convinced with what Mr. Powell had to say then by way of `proof'.

But he has maintained that Washington was not only troubled by the conviction that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction but also that Saddam Hussein had refused to answer questions on the subject put to him by the United Nations.

"We were not only saying we thought they had them but we had questions that needed to be answered. What was it: 500 tonnes, 100 tonnes, or zero tonnes? Was it so many litres of anthrax, 10 times that amount or nothing? What we demanded of Iraq was that they account for all of this and they prove the negative of our hypothesis," Mr. Powell maintained.

Iraq and its so-called weapons of mass destruction are expected to gather more steam in the days ahead especially in the light of what Dr. Kay had said; and how key law-makers on Capitol Hill are going to see Mr. Powell's assertions.

One view is that Dr. Kay's comments have dealt a major blow to the credibility of the Bush administration; and a lot of this had to do with the February 5, 2003 presentation of Mr. Powell before the Security Council in New York.

"I think the answer to the question is, I don't know yet," was Mr. Powell's response when asked which was right — Dr. Kay's statements or his own argument then that Iraq had failed to account for vast quantities of chemical weapons.

"Last year, when I made my presentation, it was based on the best intelligence we had at the time, Mr. Powell has said.

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