Powell says Bush has not decided on action

Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, said yesterday that there remained differences within the Bush administration on how to deal with Iraq and that the President had not decided military action was inevitable. He said members of the administration "have full, open debate without pulling our punches".

General Powell said President George Bush's advisers "all have lots of views and we all communicate in different ways. When he has completed that examination it will be as a result of consultation with friends, consultation within his administration. The President will take the case to the public and the international community."

General Powell's comments, broadcast yesterday on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme, will focus attention on the differences within the administration as it manoeuvres to try to demonstrate a united front. Such differences have been underlined in recent weeks by comments from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said he supported a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, and said that efforts to return weapons inspectors would be counterproductive.

General Powell, who represents the alternative opinion within the administration, yesterday repeated his view that the return of United Nations weapons inspectors was a first step. He said Mr Bush "has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return".

He added: "How much more [Iraq has] done since 1998, what their inventories might be like now, this is what is not known and this is one of the reasons it would be useful to let the inspectors go in. They have to be able to go anywhere they need to, any time they need to, to see whatever they have to see to assure the world that these weapons are not there or are being brought under control."

General Powell refused to be drawn on Mr Cheney's call for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, but he conceded there was an imperative to do something with the Baghdad regime. He said: "There is an imperative not to allow this regime ... which we characterise as evil ... to continue to stick its finger in the eye of the international community, to stick its finger in the eye of the civilised world."

In recent days the White House has been making stringent efforts to present the image of an administration that is united in its approach to Iraq. Mr Cheney and General Powell, with Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, and Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, all appeared on American television talk shows yesterday to make the case against Iraq.