He said that Russia and the United States had put aside their bitter disagreement over the need for the war and were both "trying to look forward toward the future and not the past."

Powell defended pre-war intelligence used to argue the US case for going to war.

"There were programs that were clearly intended to produce weapons of mass destruction. They had the intention to produce weapons of mass destruction, and we knew they previously had stockpiles," Powell said in a live interview on Moscow Echo radio.

"What we are now looking at is whether there are still stockpiles and that is an open question, but that we have sent back a new chief inspector," he said.

Powell conceded that the US administration was no longer certain that stockpiles were still in occupied Iraq. But he argued that Saddam had had the full intention of creating new deadly weapons in the future.

The United States intends "to finally answer the question" of whether Iraq had stockpiles or not, he said.

"There is also no doubt in my mind that what Hussein was trying to do was to get the international community to stop looking at him, to get relief from all of the sanctions so that he could go back to his programs and develop these weapons.

"He had never lost the intention to develop even more deadly weapons," Powell said.

He referred on Saturday to the "open question" about Iraq weapons, echoing a move by other top US officials to back away from pre-war rhetoric accusing Saddam of having banned arms and warning of imminent danger if he was not deposed.

The top US diplomat's arrival in Moscow came amid a growing debate about the US administration's failure to find weapons of mass destruction, fueled by the resignation last week of the man leading the US search in Iraq.

David Kay -- who resigned on Friday after his Iraq Survey Group failed to find any proof of active banned weapons programs -- shifted the blame over the weekend from US President George W. Bush to the US intelligence community for the pre-war assertions of an Iraqi threat.

Russia argued repeatedly against the war by noting that UN weapons inspectors had themselves found no traces of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program.

Powell said that those disagreements were now a thing of the past and that he was reassured that this was the case after his meeting Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We had a positive discussion about Iraq," Powell said of Putin. "There is no question that last year there was a serious disagreement.... but now we are cooperating again in helping rebuild Iraq."

However he was noncommittal about the return of Russian oil companies to the lucrative Iraqi market. Russian majors struck those deals with Saddam and lost them when his regime fell.

Powell said the decision as to who will be awarded oil contracts would be up to the "Iraqi people."

"After we have transferred sovereignty to the Iraqi people, it will be up to the Iraqi people what relationship they will have with German, French and Russian (oil companies)," he said.

"We are trying to look forward toward the future and not the past," Powell said.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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