by James Muhammad
Editor

(FinalCall.com)--Breaking a week�s long silence on the issue, Secretary of State Colin Powell again has put himself at odds with the Bush administration by publicly supporting that UN weapons inspectors go to Iraq before any U.S.-led attack on that Muslim country occurs.

Speaking to the British Broadcasting Corp. in an interview to be broadcast at Final Call press time, Mr. Powell said the world deserves the opportunity to debate the evidence that would be presented by the inspectors.

�As a first step, let�s see what the inspectors find, send them back in,� Mr. Powell told the BBC. �The world has to be presented with the information, with the intelligence that is available,� Mr. Powell said.

Balancing his view toward Iraq, Mr. Powell added, �The president has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return. Iraq has been in violation of these many UN resolutions for most of the last 11 or so years.�

At the same time of the BBC announcement, Time magazine also reported that Mr. Powell would not be part of a second term administration of President Bush if he runs and wins re-election.

Time  reports that Mr. Powell plans to step down at the end of President Bush�s four-year term. The magazine said Mr. Powell was pleased he had helped Mr. Bush win office but was frustrated by Cabinet military hawks like Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

�He will have done a yeoman�s job of contributing over the four years. But that�s enough,� Time  quotes an aide close to Mr. Powell as saying. �He felt: �I did what my heart told me to do. I got him here and set him up. I did the best I could do,��  the aide said.

The loss of Mr. Powell would be a setback for the president�s party, which would miss his moderate voice and the prestige and Black support the decorated military leader brings. The Republican Party lost its only Black representative in Congress when Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts recently announced he would not seek re-election.

Since identifying Iraq as part of the �axis of evil� during his State of the Union address in January, Pres. Bush had personally beat the war drums against Iraq. He recently delegated that role to Mr. Cheney, who argues inspectors will not be able to detect all of Iraq�s alleged biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs. Mr. Cheney has called for a pre-emptive strike to prevent Iraq from building a nuclear bomb, saying there was a �great danger� the return of inspectors would give �false comfort� that Mr. Hussein was contained.

Mr. Bush was due to address the UN at Final Call press time, where observers anticipate he would put his position to the world.

This is not the first time Mr. Powell has gone against the grain of the administration or was contradicted by his boss. Last year while he was at the UN stressing the need for negotiations and calling for a diplomatic solution to problems in Iraq, U.S. planes bombed several sites. He was caught off guard when the administration rejected the Kyoto protocol on global warning even as he was heading to Europe to sell missile defense plans of Pres. Bush. The rejection of the protocol offended many European leaders who have signed on to the environmental treaty.

Meanwhile, former South African President Nelson Mandela has been the most recent international leader to blast the Bush administration�s policy on Iraq, saying he is �appalled� by U.S. threats to attack Saddam Hussein and warned that Washington is �introducing chaos in international affairs.�

�We are really appalled by any country, whether a superpower or a small country, that goes outside the UN and attacks independent countries,� Mr. Mandela said before going into a meeting with French President Jacques Chirac at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development. �No country should be allowed to take the law into their own hands.� Pres. Chirac also opposes an attack on Iraq.

Current South African President Thabo Mbeki and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder also urged America to exercise restraint, saying �they were not comfortable with any military action being taken against Iraq,� according to Essop Pahad, a Cabinet minister in Pres. Mbeki�s office.

Russia�s foreign minister said the return of international weapons inspectors was key to resolving the crisis over Iraq and warned that military action by the United States could touch off further troubles in the volatile Middle East.

�Any forceful solution regarding Iraq would not only complicate regulation of (the crisis surrounding) Iraq still further, but would also undermine the situation in the Persian Gulf and Middle East,� Igor Ivanov said after talks with his Iraqi counterpart, Naji Sabri, in Russia.

�Once again, we have a case in history where a Black man has ascended to the highest position in government with hopes of influencing government around international issues,� said Dr. Conrad Worrill, chair of the National Black United Front, who led 400 people to attend the UN Conference on Racism and was angered by the U.S. refusal to participate.

�But his contributions to Bush and the administration are being undermined,� he said. �That�s why it�s important for us to build independent economic, political and social institutions that can clearly speak to our needs and our leadership.�

Dr. Worrill said he felt that while the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan�s letter to Pres. Bush had fallen on deaf ears, �it obviously didn�t fall on deaf ears of Colin Powell.� The letter called for fair U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Former Illinois Congressman Gus Savage told The Final Call  that Mr. Bush is disrespecting Mr. Powell by sending his subordinates overseas to deal with issues rather than the secretary of state, sometimes even without Mr. Powell�s knowledge.

�That must be insulting to him,� Mr. Savage said. �I think that sooner than later Colin Powell will step aside.�

Paul Rogat Loeb, an associated scholar at Seattle�s Center for Ethical Leadership, author of �Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time� and a critic of the Bush policy on Iraq, told The Final Call that the climate being created today is similar to the climate during the Vietnam War when people were being asked to accept whatever the president advocated.

�By ceding our right to have a full national debate over whether we should go to war with Iraq, we�re setting the stage for similarly damaging potential consequences,� he said. �Colin Powell lives in the real world as opposed to Vice President Dick Cheney. At least Mr. Powell recognizes the danger of going it alone. He realizes that we can only make enemies in the Arab world and that international opinion will cast us as bullies and call our policies reckless.

�Colin Powell has his finger in the dike. He still has some integrity and he is not afraid to exercise it. Ordinary citizens must stand with him and speak out.�

Herb Boyd, editor of the online publication �The Black World Today,�  has interviewed Mr. Powell and served in the same Army unit in Frankfurt, Germany, two years after Mr. Powell had moved on.

�Surprisingly, I learned that he, even as an officer, experienced the same discrimination that we as enlisted men experienced. For a few minutes I felt that he understood the reality of being Black, but he does not drop his guard for long,� he said.

�But, people must be cautious in what they read into his statements on Iraq. He is completely loyal to President George W. Bush, and he is a military man.

�So, I see the Vice President Dick Cheney vs. Colin Powell thing as good cop, bad cop and nothing else. However, there is a sense of compassion that he brings to the table because he is a Black man, but that is something he guards very closely,� Mr. Boyd said.

(Saeed Shabazz contributed to this report.)