Powell says photos, tapes show Iraqi deception

Washington - Secretary of State Colin Powell, making his case that Iraq had evaded demands that it disarm, played an audio tape for the U.N. Security Council Wednesday between Iraqi military officers purportedly discussing hiding prohibited vehicles form weapons inspectors.

"Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction," Powell said.

Powell, citing human intelligence sources, said the U.S. has information the Iraqis are dispersing rockets armed with biological weapons in western Iraq.

Powell said Iraq's actions were part of a "policy of evasion and deception" that Iraq has practiced for years.

He told the Security Council that the tape he played was an intercepted conversation between a general and a colonel in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard.

The voices on the tape were discussing a modified vehicle one of them had in his possession that was made by an Iraqi company that Powell said was a weapons manufacturer.

"We have this modified vehicle," one of them said as the two discussed a pending visit by a U.N. weapons inspector.

"I'm worried you all have something left," the second voice says.

"We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left," the other replies.

Powell also presented declassified satellite pictures as he sought to persuade a mostly skeptical Council that Iraq continues to defy disarmament demands. He said photographs were of 15 munitions bunkers and that four of them had active chemical munitions inside.

Saddam, in an interview broadcast Tuesday in London, denied his government has a relationship with the al-Qaida or has weapons of mass destruction. He said it would be impossible to hide such arms.

"If we had a relationship with al-Qaida, and we believed in that relationship, we wouldn't be ashamed to admit it," the Iraqi leader said.

Most U.S. allies, including France and Germany, want more time for U.N. weapons inspectors to do their work in Iraq. But President Bush and his top national security aides have said repeatedly that the United States -- with or without its allies -- will forcibly disarm Iraq if it does not immediately comply with U.N. resolutions requiring it to rid itself of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Powell, showing satellite photos, said that two days before the inspections began, trucks arrived at close to 30 missile sites and removed material. He said "we don't know precisely what Iraq was moving."

Powell referred specifically to two photographs, one taken Nov. 10 of a ballistic missile site and another taken Nov. 25 showing a truck caravan at what he said was a biological weapons facility.

Those trucks were "something we almost never see at this facility and we monitor it carefully and regularly," he asserted.

As he opened his presentation, Powell reminded the Council that it had voted unanimously last Nov. 8 for a resolution that "gave Iraq one last chance to come into compliance or to face serious consequences."

"No Council member present...had any illusion...what serious consequences meant," he said.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer presided over the session.

Iraq's ambassador, Mohammed Al-Douri, was invited by Fischer to take a seat at the large circular Security Council table to listen to Powell's presentation and to make remarks afterward. As he headed into the chamber, he was asked what message he would be delivering. "It's a message for peace," Al-Douri said. -- Associated Press

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