US could unveil evidence against Iraq

Carrying the US case against Saddam Hussein, Secretary of State Colin Powell tonight headed to Africa for a world summit where he was expected to face criticism from foreign leaders upset by the Bush administration’s threats to attack Iraq.

The Earth Summit in Johannesburg gives Powell a chance to talk with world leaders about Iraq, a subject on which he has been notably quiet while President George Bush’s other foreign policy advisers have argued loudly for military action to oust Saddam from power.

The Bush administration could lay out further evidence of the threat posed by Iraq in the coming days and weeks, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today.

That information could be released during congressional hearings on Iraq planned for later this month, Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.

Rumsfeld said the United States wanted Iraq to let US inspectors return without conditions. He said Iraq was trying to “play the international community and the UN process like a guitar, plucking the right string and the right process at the right moment.”

“And then you’ll find at the last moment, they’ll withdraw that carrot and go back into their other mode of thumbing their nose at the international community,” Rumsfeld said.

Aides have said repeatedly that Bush has not made a decision on what to do about Iraq. Powell, a retired Army general and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, has not indicated publicly that he disagrees with the goal of removing Saddam.

But Powell has advocated restraint before - against Iraq after Kuwait was freed and against intervention in the Balkans against ethnic conflict during the first Clinton administration.