WASHINGTON, Dec 24: US Secretary of State Colin Powell recommended sending more troops to Iraq during a secret meeting last month between US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, The Washington Post said on Friday.

The November 12 meeting between the two leaders, one of several by videoconference after the US November 2 presidential election, was so secret that its transcripts were destroyed after other senior officials read them, people familiar with the official records of the meeting told the daily.

Accounts of the outgoing secretary of state's exact advice given at the meeting differ slightly and it was unclear if his input prompted a December 1 announcement that US troop levels in Iraq were to increase by 12,000 to 150,000 ahead of the January 30 elections there.

One US official said Powell flatly stated: "We don't have enough troops. We don't control the terrain." A State Department official, instead, said Powell was less pointed and spoke not only of the US military presence but also of the British and Iraqi forces there.

"They were talking about the security situation," said the official. "They asked Powell his opinion" and Powell concluded that the number of US, coalition and Iraqi troops was insufficient to ensure control of the ground, he added.

Both officials withheld their identities in providing information on the secret sessions, the existence of which The Washington Post took to mean that, privately, there has been more concern at the top levels of the US government about the conduct of the US mission in Iraq than has been shown publicly.

The disclosure also shows Powell assuming an unusual role for a secretary of state, advising the president on a military issue, the daily added. Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, invoked his military background during the meeting, the state department official said. -AFP