WASHINGTON, September 9, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell regretted his UN statement making the case for the US-led Iraq invasion, saying it was a 'blot' on his record.

"It is a blot on my record," Powell said in an interview with ABC TV news, to be broadcast Friday, September 9, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

In his February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council, Powell forcibly made the case for the US invasion of the Arab country, offering "proof" that the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Powell's presentation included satellite photos of trucks that the former diplomat identified as mobile bio-weapons laboratories.

But after the US invasion-turned-occupation of Iraq, US weapons inspectors found no traces of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons in the Arab country.

"I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."

Before giving his UN statement on Iraq, Powell spent five days at the CIA headquarters studying intelligence reports on the alleged Iraqi WMDs, most – if not all -- of which turned out to be false.

Powell said he felt "terrible" at being misinformed. However, he did not blame CIA director George Tenet on false information.

"Mr. Tenet did not sit there for five days with me misleading me," Powell said.

"He believed what he was giving to me was accurate."

The former US official, however, said some members of the US intelligence community "knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up."

"These are not senior people, but these are people who were aware that some of these resources should not be considered reliable," he said.

"I was enormously disappointed."

At a private meeting with Powell at the Waldorf hotel in New York, Straw expressed concern that the WMDs claims parroted by the Bush administration could not be proved.

The former US top diplomat also said that he had "never seen evidence to suggest" a connection between the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein.

Powell downplayed his reported difference with Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

He maintained that he was on good terms with US President George W Bush.

"There are some who say, 'well, you shouldn't have supported (the war), you should have resigned', but I'm glad that Saddam Hussein is gone," Powell said.

Powell called Cheney, Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz “fucking crazies” during a phone conversation with his British counterpart Jack Straw, the Guardian reported on September 12.

The former US diplomat expressed concern over a possible sectarian strife in post-Saddam Iraq, threatening to divide the Arab country.

"A way has to be found for the Sunnis to be brought into the political process. You cannot let ... Iraq devolve into a mini-state in the north, a larger mini-state in the south, and sort of nothing in the middle," he said.

"The mission we set for ourselves at the beginning, and which we told the Iraqis that we were going to do, is to keep this as a single state. And that's the challenge that we have now."

Iraqi Sunnis have opposed to the new Iraqi charter drafted by the ruling Shiite and Kurdish coalition.

Sunnis want the text to be amended to a country with “one capital, one province, decentralized governorates and a local administration.”