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(Washington-AP) -- Secretary of State Powell admits he's still seen no "smoking gun, concrete evidence" of links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaida.
But he says he still believes Iraq had dangerous weapons and needed to be disarmed.
The secretary was responding at a Washington news conference to a report produced by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It claimed the Bush administration misrepresented the threat from Iraq.
Powell defended the presentation he made at the United Nations Security Council before the war. He said, "We had seen some links and connections to terrorist organizations over time."
The Carnegie report said U-S intelligence failed in Iraq. And it charged that Bush administration officials left qualifications and uncertainties out of the reporting on Iraq's weapons and terror connections.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
