Briefing Security Council, Us Secretary Of State Powell

Presents evidence of Iraq’s failure to disarm

“Clearly, Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops him”, Secretary of State of the United States Colin Powell warned the Security Council today in his briefing intended to convince members that Iraq had failed to disarm.

Through the use of satellite photographs and intercepted telephone conversations in a presentation entitled “Iraq: Failing to Disarm”, Mr. Powell promised that that evidence plus that which had been gathered by people who had risked their lives would let the world know “what Saddam Hussein was really up to”. Saddam Hussein was determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction and to make more, he said. For him, possession of the world’s most deadly weapons was the ultimate trump card, the one he must hold to fulfill his ambition.

Underlying all the facts and patterns of behavior was Saddam Hussein’s contempt for the will of the Council, his contempt for the truth, and most damning of all, his utter contempt for human life, Mr. Powell said. His use of mustard and nerve gas against the Kurds in 1988 was one of the twentieth century’s most horrible atrocities. He had also conducted ethnic cleansing against the Shia Iraqis and the Marsh Arabs. His police State ruthlessly eliminated anyone who dared to dissent. Nothing pointed more clearly to Saddam Hussein’s dangerous intentions than his calculated cruelty to his own citizens and neighbors.