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| Colin Powell To Saddam Hussein: 'We Are Not Deceived' | 
 | Colin Powell
Photo: CBS News
| Prospects for a peaceful resolution to the standoff in the Persian Gulfappeared to dim Thursday as the United States accused Iraq of again deliberately attemptingto mislead the United Nations.
Calling the 12,000-page declaration of weapons capabilities Iraq submittedto the U.N. earlier this month "a catalog of recycled information andflagrant omissions," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell slammed Iraq forlack of candor.
"We are disappointed, but we are not deceived," Powell said. "Thisdeclaration is consistent with the Iraqi regime's past practices. We haveseen this game again and again; an attempt to sow confusion to buy time,hoping the world will lose interest."
Powell also said that the U.S. now considers Iraq in "material breach" of U.N.Resolution 1441, which calls on the Gulf nation to fully disclose all of itsweapons of mass destruction and weapon-making capabilities. Material breachis a legal term used to describe when one party fails to live up to theterms of a previously agreed-upon arrangement.
The Bush administration has been promising immediate action againstIraq if the nation is found to have violated 1441. But despite the tough talk fromPowell, the U.S. says it will continue to wait for the team of U.N. weaponsinspectors currently in Iraq to complete its work before consideringfurther, possibly military, action.
Still, Powell warned, "Iraq is well on its way to losing this lastchance" and that "the world will not wait forever."
Powell was not alone in criticizing the Iraqi declaration of weapons andweapon-making capabilities. Earlier in the day, U.N. chief weaponsinspector Hans Blix also said that the document contained less than the U.N.had requested. "There has been relatively little given in the declarationby way of evidence concerning the programs of weapons of mass destruction,"Blix said after a briefing of the United Nations Security Council. MohamedEl Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, expressed similarsentiments.
But neither Blix nor El Baradei went as far as Powell in describing Iraq'sdeclaration as a material breach. And Blix emphasized that, despite what heconsidered to be omissions from the report, Iraq could still comply withthe U.N. resolution.
"An opportunity was missed in the declaration to give a lot of evidence.They can still provide it orally but it would have been better if it was inthe declaration," he added.
Iraq rejected the U.S. charges, calling them "baseless."
"I would like to confirm that the Iraqi declaration is complete andcomprehensive," said Mohammed Salmane, Iraq's deputy Ambassador to the U.N.Salmane said that the completion of weapons inspections in Iraq woulddemonstrate that Iraq had provided full disclosure in the document.
In his critique of the Iraqi report, Powell said that the document failed toaddress key questions that were raised during previous rounds of U.N.weapons inspections. Inspectors were last allowed into Iraq in 1998.
Shortly after Powell concluded his remarks, State Department officialsdistributed a "fact sheet" detailing many of the questions the Iraqi declaration had failed to answer. For example, thereport did not account for 2,160 kilograms of growth media, which Iraq isbelieved to have previously possessed and which can be used to produceanthrax.
As the inspections in Iraq continue, Powell said the U.S. would insist thatIraq's scientists be interviewed in locations where they could speak freelyabout the country's weapons development plan, perhaps outside Iraq itself.
Powell also said that the U.S. expects U.N. weapons inspectors to continueto pore over the Iraqi document while redoubling efforts inside Iraq toseek out evidence of weapon-making materials.
By Ethan Zindler
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