Administration plans to disclose evidence on Iraq

WASHINGTON -- Pressing its campaign for worldwide support, the Bush administration is preparing to present new evidence to foreign leaders and the American public that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction and has links to the al-Qaida terror network.

Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to make the presentation at the United Nations next week. A senior U.S. official said Powell would stress the extent to which Iraq was concealing its illicit programs.

The format for Powell's presentation had not been set Tuesday. One option under consideration was a Powell meeting with several foreign ministers of nations on the Security Council.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., said Tuesday on Capitol Hill that "the administration has evidence now that can change people's minds." However, Biden said, "It's a very tough call as to how much to release."

Biden said he did not think the administration would make photographs public, as Adlai E. Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, did in 1962 to back the Kennedy administration's claim the Soviet Union had deployed missiles in Cuba that could strike the United States.

But, Biden said, "I know there is enough circumstantial evidence that if there were a jury trial I could convict you."

Some of the evidence has been given to U.N. inspectors, an administration official told The Associated Press.

Skepticism is widespread among European nations, though, that diplomacy has run its course and that force is the way to gain Iraq's disarmament. And Biden, in a Senate speech, criticized President Bush's handling of the crisis.

Biden said 75,000 U.S. soldiers would be needed in Iraq for up to five years after a war. And the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee said Bush's "choice of words and failure to clearly explain the choices we have and the basis for action when we do act has been dangerous to our standing in the world."

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's "record speaks for itself." But the Foreign Relations Committee member said: "I don't think that's a good enough reason to say, 'The hell with the inspectors. Let's go to war."'

In Brussels, Belgium, the Bush administration suffered a setback within NATO. A senior European diplomat disclosed the allies would delay a U.S. proposal to send surveillance planes and Patriot missiles to Turkey. The United States had proposed the transfers in case Iraq should retaliate against Turkey for allowing U.S. use of Turkish bases.

Powell told European editors Sunday that there was evidence of links between the al-Qaida network and Iraq.

"We do have evidence of it," Powell said, according to a text released Tuesday by the State Department. "We are not suggesting there is a 9/11 link, but we are suggesting -- we do have evidence -- of connections over the years between Iraq and al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations."

Powell told the European reporters in Davos, Switzerland, where he attended a world economic meeting, that he could not say whether there would be a "presentation that would be as persuasive as Adlai Stevenson was."

"I would love to have that kind of material to present and we are seeing what we could do, what we might find in the next couple of weeks," Powell said.

Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld agreed to provide a private briefing on Wednesday to House members, as they did for a group of senators last week.

Meanwhile, a senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush would use one or two new pieces of recently unclassified intelligence to outline his case against Iraq in Tuesday night's State of the Union address.

A senior Iraqi official insisted Tuesday that Baghdad had no banned weapons and said that U.N. inspectors' reports criticizing Iraq for scant cooperation was not a "proportional representation" of the facts.

"I would like first of all to say Iraq has been free of any weapons of mass destruction since the end of 1991 and all the inspections ... have proven this fact," Gen. Amir Rashid told reporters.