US will reveal new intelligence on Iraq weapons

The United States will publish new intelligence next week in an attempt to persuade sceptics at home and abroad that Iraq is still pursuing weapons of mass destruction and is systematically hiding evidence from United Nations inspectors.

Monday's unexpectedly harsh verdict by Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector, on Iraq's performance thus far has increased America's resolve to use force, with or without a second Security Council resolution. Such a resolution, Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman said yesterday, was "desirable but not mandatory".

By the middle of February the US-led attack force will be virtually in place around Iraq. "We are getting closer and closer to the point where the Council is going to have to look at the options it anticipated," Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said, referring to approval for the use of force.

But the intelligence issue is emerging as pivotal. Not only public opinion across Europe, but also prominent voices at home, insist Mr Bush simply has not made the case that Iraq is so serious a threat it must be dealt with immediately.

Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, led Democratic calls for conclusive evidence, along the lines of the photos produced by the Kennedy administration to justify the blockade of Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis.

Yesterday General Norman Schwarzkopf, who led Operation Desert Storm in 1991, expressed his own doubts. "Before I can just stand up and say, 'Beyond a shadow of a doubt, we need to invade Iraq', I would like to have better information" he told The Washington Post.

Joseph Biden, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, predicted that America would have to keep 75,000 troops in Iraq for up to five years after a military victory. This issue had not been addressed by the President, Mr Biden said.

It is questionable just how convincing the proof will be, in the new US documents. General Powell claims that United Nations inspectors and US intelligence have evidence of Iraqi officials ordering prohibited material to be hidden before inspectors visited one site.

According to The Washington Post the intelligence shows that members of Saddam Hussein's inner circle have personally organised the concealment of weapons.

But as one official admitted, the United States would have a job presenting as compelling a case as the one put forward to the world body by Adlai Stevenson, the former US ambassador to the United Nations during the Cuban crisis, based on photos of large Soviet missiles in a valley, clearly visible from the air.

* The former UN arms inspector Richard Butler said yesterday that Washington was promoting "shocking double standards" in considering taking unilateral military action to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Butler, who led UN inspection teams in Iraq until they left in 1998, said President Saddam undoubtedly possessed weapons of mass destruction, and was trying to "cheat" his way again out of the latest demand to disarm.

But an American attack, without UN backing, would be a contravention of international law and sharpen the divide between Arabs and the West.