Powell Offers U.N. No Apologies

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Friday that no apologies were necessary even though none of the intelligence he presented to the Security Council to justify an invasion of Iraq has panned out.

A year and a day after Powell gave the Security Council classified material to make the case that Iraq was a “grave and growing danger,” nearly all of the presentation’s claims have been discredited or discarded.

“I don’t think any apologies are necessary,” Powell told reporters at the U.N. on the sidelines of a donors conference for Liberia. “It represented the best judgment we could make at that time on Saddam Hussein’s capabilities.”

Powell defended what he said was “solid intelligence” behind Washington’s decision to go to war. He said that Hussein’s track record showed that he had the ability and intention to maintain his weapons programs, although the United States was not sure of the nature of his stockpiles.

But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that Washington’s flawed basis for war had caused “damage that will probably take some time to heal.”

“People are going to be very suspicious when one talks to them about intelligence. And they are going to be very suspicious when we try to use intelligence to justify certain actions,” Annan said. He added that gathering intelligence remained essential and praised the U.S. and Britain for creating commissions to investigate the faulty interpretations. However, “the bar has been raised as to how you convince people,” he said.

Powell also sat down with his French counterpart, Dominique de Villepin, for the first time since they clashed a year ago over Iraq policy. Some diplomats described their encounter as a “kiss-and-make-up meeting.”

After a lunchtime discussion of Liberia and Ivory Coast, the Middle East “road map” and a potential role for NATO in Iraq, Powell and De Villepin agreed that there was much to work on together and to leave any grudges behind.

“We had a major disagreement last year,” Powell said. “But, you know, disagreements come and disagreements go.”

In an afternoon news conference, De Villepin said he gave Powell the benefit of the doubt on the Iraq intelligence presentation. “I think that my colleague and friend Colin Powell, when he stood up in front of the Security Council at the beginning of February, took the stand he believed in with the knowledge he had at the time.”

Then he hinted that the U.S. and Iraq would be in a better position now if Washington had not skirted the United Nations. “I think it’s always useful to act collectively,” he said. “That’s why we believe in the Security Council.” De Villepin added that any further NATO involvement in Iraq beyond technical assistance must be done at the request of a sovereign Iraqi government, and with Security Council approval.

The only tense moments during the tete-a-tete, aides said, occurred during discussions of a peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast. France wants the Security Council to approve a large U.N. force for the former French colony in West Africa. But Washington, which pays 27% of the U.N.’s peacekeeping costs, has been trying to whittle the size of an expensive new venture.

Powell and De Villepin came to the United Nations to pledge funds for rebuilding war-ravaged Liberia. The two-day donors conference raised more than $520 million, exceeding its $488-million target.

Washington promised $200 million to rehabilitate child soldiers and rebuild the country’s tattered infrastructure, and the European Commission offered $120 million. In a move that some interpreted as an effort to win U.S. support for the Ivory Coast mission, France surprised U.N. and Liberian officials with a donation of $32 million.

“What is the meaning of sending 15,000 peacekeepers to Liberia if tomorrow we have a war in Cote d’Ivoire?” De Villepin said.