Global Policy Forum

By Suzanne Goldenberg

The man credited with preventing the United States from unilateral action in a war with Iraq yesterday appeared to have affected a transformation from leading White House dove to born-again warrior.

Following Washington's first detailed appraisal of Iraq's weapons declaration, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, seems to have enlisted in the hardline camp.

In his preliminary comments on Iraq's declaration on Wednesday, Mr Powell said Iraq had failed to give a serious account of its weapons arsenal, holding back evidence of its nuclear programme, and its stocks of biological and chemical weapons.

"Our analysis of the Iraqi declaration to this point... shows problems with the declaration, gaps, omissions - and all of this is troublesome," Mr Powell said. "We are not encouraged that they have gotten the message and that they will cooperate."

He added that the United States would "stay within the UN process".

However, the implications were clear: after months of being perceived as the lone dove in the Bush administration, Mr Powell appeared to be moving on side with Washington's preparations for war. His comments were widely seen as a first step towards war.

"This is a step-by-step process to bring the American people and world opinion around to make it very clear that Saddam Hussein is violating," the former Nato commander, General Wesley Clark, told CNN yesterday.

Mr Powell's journey from peacemaker to warrior began last August when he held several face-to-face chats with President George Bush, and moved him away from the majority position within the administration that Washington was prepared to go to war on its own against President Saddam.

The president's decision was seen as vindication for Mr Powell, who had complained to confidants earlier this year that he felt frozen out of the administration.

By November, it had taken on the status of a major diplomatic triumph.

After weeks of assiduous diplomacy, Mr Powell succeeded in persuading all the members of the security council - including Syria - to sign on to the resolution for a tough new inspections regime in Iraq. Even then there were signs of the warrior within. On the eve of the security council vote, Mr Powell told a group of journalists that the US would show zero tolerance to any evasions from Iraq.

"We will know very early on whether Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government plan to cooperate," he said. "We will know in short order by the nature of the declaration they send in."

Despite its condemnation this week of the contents of Iraq's declaration, Washington officially remains committed to the inspections regime. As Mr Powell said on Wednesday, the US will continue to work through the United Nations system, which means that it will press for the UN to take a hardline approach on the next stage of the inspections: interviews with Iraqi weapons scientists.

But it may well be that his true mission in the coming days will be to get the world to side with Washington when it goes to war - rather than to stop a conflict from erupting.

"As Saddam has been given more time to produce and fails to deliver and blocks the inspectors, I think the UN security council's sympathy and support will shift more and more to the United States position," Gen Clark said yesterday.

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