CAIRO, Feb 4: US Secretary of State Colin Powell will tell the United Nations on Wednesday of “pointers, rather than proof” of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, a senior aide was quoted as saying on Monday.

“I don’t want to raise false hopes,” Richard Haass, the State Department’s director of policy planning, told the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, comparing Powell’s information to a pointillist painting by impressionist Georges Seurat, who created pictures out of thousands of tiny coloured dots.

“We are going to provide more ‘points’ on the activities of the Iraqis, from which any intelligent person can deduce that they are hiding something and have gone a very long way to make the work of the inspectors fail,” he said, according to the official Arabic-language daily.

“What we are going to obtain is a more complete image of all that, and all I ask is for us to be realistic in our expectations,” Haass added.

“We are not going to provide pictures of stocks of 30,000 warheads, each one capable of carrying chemical weapons, if that is the sort of proof you are talking about.” Mr Haas said it was rare for intelligence services, whether American, Russian or Egyptian, to supply proof as concrete as that.

“What we will do in the Security Council on Wednesday is share with the international community more information showing that (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) does not want to respect international resolutions.”

Mr Powell would also “explain how the Iraqis are reducing the scope of inspections.—AFP