NEW YORK, Sept 9: Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a television interview on Friday that his 2003 speech to the United Nations, in which he gave a detailed description of Iraq’s weapons programs that turned out not to exist, was ‘painful’ for him personally and would be a permanent ‘blot’ on his record. In the interview with ABC News, Mr Powell said: “I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, will always be a part of my record.”

Asked by interviewer Barbara Walters how painful this was for him, Mr Powell replied: “It was painful. It’s painful now.”

As to how he felt upon learning that he had been misled about the accuracy of intelligence on which he relied, Mr Powell said: “Terrible.”

He added that it was ‘devastating’ to learn later that some intelligence agents knew the information he had was unreliable but did not speak up.

A former top American diplomat also reflected that the United States did not invade Iraq with sufficient troops to secure the country .

“What we didn’t do in the immediate aftermath of the war was to impose our will on the whole country with enough troops of our own, with enough troops from coalition forces or by re-creating the Iraqi forces, armed forces, more quickly than we are doing now,” he said.

When asked to comment on press criticism that he had put loyalty ‘ahead of leadership’, Mr Powell parried the question. “Well, loyalty is a trait that I value, and yes, I am loyal,” he replied. “And there are some who say,

‘Well, you shouldn’t have supported it, you should have resigned.’ But I’m glad that Saddam Hussein is gone.”

Mr Powell told ABC News that he did not blame George Tenet, the then director of central intelligence, for the failures and did not believe that Mr Tenet tried to mislead him.

“No, George Tenet did not sit there for five days with me, misleading me,” he said, referring to the week he spent at the Central Intelligence Agency reviewing the evidence on Iraq before making his presentation to the United Nations.

“There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn’t be relied upon, and they didn’t speak up. That devastated me.”

Commenting on the situation in Iraq, Mr Powell said the United States has ‘little choice but to keep investing in the Iraqi armed forces and to do everything we can to increase their size and their capability and their strength’.

He acknowledged several times that intelligence failures lay behind his presentation on the eve of the Iraq invasion two years ago, but he has never expressed any regret about the invasion itself.

Asked by Ms Walters: “When the president made the decision to go to war, you were for it?” Mr Powell said: “Yes.”