WASHINGTON, March 12: The US president has no plan on his desk or recommendations from his National Security Council to take military action against any country in the world.

This assertion was made by Secretary of State Colin Powell in a testimony before a Senate appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday even as Vice-President Richard Cheney was engaged in a Middle East mission reportedly designed to win support for possible US action directed against the Saddam Hussein government.

Secretary Powell said the US was working with the United Nations to secure Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions on weapons inspections. But the US believed that the Iraqi people and the world at large would be better off if the Saddam government was no longer in power, and Washington was cooperating with the Iraqi opposition.

One of the senators on the subcommittee, Democrat Daniel Inouve (Hawaii), pointed out that when Grenada was invaded by US troops in 1983, Congressional leaders were simply summoned to a meeting at the White House and informed of what had happened. The senator, reflecting a general sense on the Democrat side that the administration was not keeping Congress fully in the picture as it expanded its “war on terrorism”, hoped that this would not be the pattern again if a decision was made to attack Iraq or Yemen or Somalia or any other country. Secretary Powell said President Bush knew that Congress was interested in discussing such questions and would do so.

Replying to questions on the continuing controversy here and abroad over the new nuclear defence review that mentions the option of using nuclear weapons against President Bush’s “axis-of-evil” countries and other states, Mr Powell said no preemptive nuclear strike was being contemplated against any country, and what the review did was to outline a range of options to consider when dealing with countries that acquired weapons of mass destruction. As long as there were nations that continued to move in the direction of acquiring such weapons, the US must ensure the security of its people.

He pointed out that the nuclear arsenal was in fact being reduced in agreement with Russia and said no new nuclear weapons were being developed that would need testing: the US was only examining how the existing ones could be modified.

Observers have said the nuclear defence review indicates a new posture that indicates that the Bush administration is seeking to increase, rather than decrease, the role of nuclear weapons in US foreign and military policy. However, Vice-President Cheney was said to have described the review in London on Monday as routine and required by Congress. He said the “notion I’ve seen reported in the press that somehow this means we are preparing preemptive strikes .... I’d say that’s a bit over the top.”