US Ambassador to Malaysia Marie Huhtala met with malaysiakini last Friday to elaborate o­n her country's case for war o­n Iraq, after Secretary of State Colin Powell had presented 'evidence' gathered from intelligence reports to the UN Security Council in New York.

Malaysiakini : US Secretary of State Colin Powell had presented what the US claimed to be "irrefutable and undeniable" evidence to justify war against Iraq. However it has been widely reported that the evidence produced could hardly justify a war that would cost many, many lives. Of course there is also the historical record of misinformation to justify the war back in 1990. When US was preparing its war against Iraq, there was heavy reliance of classified satellite photographs purportedly showed that in September 1990, Iraqi soldiers were already gathering o­n the border of Saudi Arabia. A year later, Powell admitted that the information was not true

Huhtala: I don't know anything about that

I could show you a copy of the story relating the information.

Huhtala: (reading) Yes...let's not talk about this because I am not prepared o­n this at all.

People claimed that there was misinformation then. And now people are not convinced either. Can you comment o­n this?

I want to draw the distinction between misinformation and disinformation. Satellite imagery and other kinds of intelligence are open to all kinds of interpretation. And people can make mistakes when (they) interpret it. That would be misinformation - a mistake in interpretation.

Disinformation is a term that talks about deliberately planting information that is false to mislead others and to create problems. And of course, our country (the US) has never been involved in disinformation. But we have to agree that there could be different interpretations in terms of the information that you get.

With regard to the Secretary's presentation, you have to back to the UN Resolution 1441, which was, as you know, passed after eight weeks of negotiations and unanimously endorsed by the members of the UN Security Counciland the resolution may be an assertion that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction.

This has been known to the UN ever since the end of the first Gulf War and the resolution calls o­n Iraq to reveal all the weapons of mass destruction that it has and to disarm, and then to prove to the inspectors that it has disarmed.

The first declaration that Iraq made was incompleteit had a lot of old information and did not fulfil the criteria of a complete declaration of what they had.

The US also has a lot of information that Iraq not o­nly has weapons of mass destruction but is also hiding them, putting obstacles in the way of inspectors. It is acquiring more and putting more efforts to acquire more chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

And, we also have information it is co-operating with terrorists. Because the resolution calls o­n members to share information that Iraq is not living up to the resolution, they can come to the council. That was what Secretary Powell did.

It is not that he was calling for warit's just that he was responding to the needs of the Resolution 1441 and laying the best information that is available to us to demonstrate that Iraq is not complying with the resolution; that it is not disarming; that it is not fulfilling the declaration and it is not co-operating with the inspectors.

The question is, if this is not just about war, but also about (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein.

Yes, indeed. It's all about Saddam. Now, the resolution says that there will be serious consequences if Iraq does not live up to the demands made by the international community. So that's where you could see a war developing but this was not a justification for war so much as laying out a case that Iraq has not lived up to the commitment it has made many times over since the end of the Gulf War and to the demands of the international community. Resolution 1441 was the last chance. We have frequently said to Iraq, this is your last chance to disarm yourself and to co-operate with international committee. And our judgment is that Iraq is not taking that chance.

For the past 12 years, sanctions have restricted Saddam in o­ne way - why should we abandon sanctions and go straight to war?