American Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday told the United Nations Security Council that Iraq continues to follow a policy of denial and deception and asserted that it is not cooperating with UN weapons inspectors and is hiding prohibited weapons.

Right in the beginning of the presentation, Powell played two tapes of conversation between military commanders which, he said, clearly indicate that they were trying to hide prohibited weapons and to ensure that weapons inspectors do not find anything.

Powell also presented the council with spy satellite photos that he said proved Iraq was maintaining banned weapons programmes in defiance of UN disarmament demands.

He alleged that Iraqi officials hid correspondence on military industrialisation, ordered the removal of banned weapons from key sites and hid prohibited items in their homes.

One of the satellite pictures showed what Powell said was an ammunition facility, which housed chemical weapons.

He claimed the facility was cleaned up before the inspections and showed pictures to buttress his argument.

Another image, he said, showed that Iraq had moved missiles days before the inspections. Another image, he said, showed trucks and cranes brought to remove the missiles.

The issue, Powell said, is not how much time the weapons inspectors should be given but for how long the Security Council is prepared to put up with Iraq's deception.

Iraq has not accounted for all biological materials which it had admitted it possessed, he said.

Iraq, he said, has at least 18 mobile weapon production facilities. It is difficult to find even one from among thousands and thousand of trucks without Baghdad informing the inspectors, he added.

He said that a person who worked in weapons production units-mounted trucks and railcars and gave the information is now hiding in another country to escape Iraq's wrath.

Accusing Saddam Hussein of creating a special office to thwart the inspection process and to spy on the inspectors, Powell said: "Iraq has a high-level committee to monitor the inspectors who were sent in to monitor Iraq's disarmament, not to cooperate with them, not to assist them, but to spy on them and keep them from doing their jobs."

The job of the committee, which reports directly to Saddam, 'is not to cooperate, it is to deceive; not to disarm, but to undermine the inspectors; not to support them, but to frustrate them and to make sure they learn nothing', Powell charged.

Call it a 'genius or evil genius', Powell said, Iraqi chemical and biological weapons progammes were deliberately made to deceive inspectors.

He accused Iraq of hiding prohibited weapons and materials in legitimate industrial facilities.

Powell played a tape of conservation between two military officers which, he said, showed a senior officer instructing his junior to remove evidence of nerve agents.

The senior officer, he said, repeated 'remove' twice so that the junior got everything right.

Powell said the taped conversations he presented were not 'isolated incidents, but part and parcel of a policy of evasion and deception decided at the highest levels of the regime'.

"Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb," Powell said.

"If Saddam had not been stopped, he would have produced a bomb by 1993," he added.