Powell regrets WMD claim

10/2/2004 10:00:00 AM GMT

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced his regret for presenting wrong intelligence over Iraq’s WMD to the UN last year, yet he defended Bush's foreign policy against attacks from his Democrat rival John Kerry.

Powell said that the only mistake he did was in February 5, 2003, when he presented to the UN Security Council wrong intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

"The only thing where we got it wrong and where the presentation did not hold up was actual stockpiles," he told reporters at the Atlanta Press Club.

"We have seen nothing to suggest that he had actual stockpiles."

"So that was not right, and as we have gone back and looked through the intelligence, there are indications that we had bad sourcing and we should have caught some of this bad sourcing," Powell said.

"For that, I am not only disappointed but I regret that that information was not correct."

The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on pre-war intelligence about Iraq which stated that much of the information in Powell's speech to the United Nations ''was overstated, misleading or incorrect''.

Despite admitting mistakes in his UN presentation, Powell insisted that Bush had still been right to invade Iraq.

"Those stockpiles would have reappeared since he was no longer under observation or control by the international community," he said later at the State Department after meeting with Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht.

Powell, moreover, defended Bush against Kerry's assertion that poor planning by the President and his military commanders helped Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to escape from Afghanistan.

"I think it's a stretch to say that somebody knew he was there and they knew it at the time the battle was going on so that we'd know how to go get him," he told the Atlanta audience. "I have no reason to believe that our commanders mishandled that."

In Washington, Powell rejected Kerry's accusations that Bush didn’t try to get the needed support for his decision to go to war on Iraq and that he ignored the concerns of U.S. allies in his unilateral action.

"I don't accept that characterization," he said, noting that the Bush administration had previously sought the UN approval on the Iraq war.

"Every time we have faced one of these challenges, the United States has not acted unilaterally, we have gone to the United Nations," Powell said.

"We've gone to the international community. That's what we're doing with respect to proliferation activities in Iran. It's what we're doing with respect to the North Korean program."