WASHINGTON, March 9: US Secretary of State Colin Powell made an unexpected foray into the US presidential campaign on Monday, insisting that the issue of whether the Bush administration has misled the nation about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction be excluded from political debate.

In an interview with Fox News Channel, Powell said leveling such accusations "isn't right." "We shouldn't be having a political debate over issues like that," said the secretary of state, who in February 2003 told the UN Security Council that Iraq was secretly building massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. "

We ought to stick with what we said and not start changing our view a year later because it's in our political interest," Powell stressed. -AFP