IT WAS a performance worthy of a President; should Colin Powell ever change his mind and run for that office, there can be no doubt of the power of his appeal. The Secretary of State’s address to the United Nations was the strongest piece of political advocacy that the United States has yet mustered in the cause of war, overshadowing the efforts of President Bush, Tony Blair and Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector.

In the battle for popular opinion, it could have considerable impact. Powell gave us not just the showmanship of the tapes of Iraqi military discussing how to hide weapons, intercepted by US Intelligence, but the passion of someone entirely convinced of his case, all the more striking for his previously doveish stance within the Administration.

It was never going to bring an immediate, dramatic change within the UN Security Council; representatives of the 15 members promptly read out prepared statements in response that repeated their countries’ established positions. The passage of any second resolution still hangs on the French position. But Powell is likely to have succeeded in some of the task he was set: to smooth by a long way the political path to war.

If you are going to command the international stage for more than an hour, you need a soliloquy of unusual dramatic power; Powell had the best script of the conflict so far. Its highlight was the tape recordings of the tense, furtive conversations, followed by the aerial photographs said to be of chemical weapons sites.

Of course, America’s critics can say that such things are easily forged or misinterpreted. They are right, and few are equipped to judge. But Powell dealt with each in enough detail — particularly the photographs — to make a convincing case that these were evidence of deception in progress.

The weakest part, as Powell acknowledged, was the allegation that Baghdad has links to al-Qaeda. Most, he said, were through training camps in northeastern Iraq, an area that Saddam Hussein does not control, although Powell said that he had representatives there. But he made clear that the US was not relying on this link to justify its claim that Iraq presented an imminent threat to US interests.

In a thin but important tailpiece to the speech, Powell noted Saddam’s offences against human rights, including the use of mustard and nerve gas to kill at least 5,000 people in 1988, which he called “one of the 20th century’s most horrible” acts.

This is not an Administration which would use that as a casus belli. Yet some of its predecessors would have done, and Powell’s often uncomfortable relationship with his colleagues has, many times, seemed to put him within that tradition. It remains one of the Administration’s stronger arguments, although used only diffidently, a partial answer to those who say that it is all “all about oil” or that the threat, as presented, is not sufficient to justify attack.

Should Bush, Blair or Blix have given yesterday’s performance instead of the Secretary of State? They couldn’t have done. Not Bush: his delivery does not lend itself to systematic forensic analysis. His speeches are too religious in vocabulary and too belligerent to convey the sense of cool assessment that Powell managed.

For similar reasons, yesterday’s case could not have been made by Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, or Dick Cheney, the Vice-President. All are too much associated with the most hawkish views of the Adminis- tration. Powell’s well-publicised efforts to argue with such views since September 11 served to strengthen his delivery yesterday.

Blair could not have done it, for the simple reason that this was American Intelligence on display, even though he has done a fair job since September 11 of producing a systematic account of the evidence available while Washington has stayed silent. But The evidence delivered yesterday could have been displayed only by the US.

And Blix, most clearly, could not have made the case; Powell gave a much fuller account than the inspections chief has managed to do, based on evidence that appeared not to be available to the inspection teams.

In one sense, this bolsters Blix’s position, by supporting his claims that Iraq is vigorously engaged in deception and that inspectors have excellent reason to think that weapons are there, although they have not yet found them.

But Powell also undermined Blix. For a start, he upstaged him: Blix’s next report is not due until February 14, and that was to have been the next time that the Security Council considered such evidence, until Bush chose, in last week’s State of the Union address, to announce that Powell would address the UN even sooner.

Because Powell’s slide show showed Iraq giving the UN inspectors the runaround, it also weakened Blix’s argument that more time would bring success. Talking of the 18 lorries that are believed to be mobile biological weapons factories, Powell asked rhetorically how long it would take to find even a single one among the “thousands and thousands of trucks” on Iraq’s roads.

Blix’s report to the UN last week put the US on the back foot, arguing that the inspectors deserved more time. Powell’s performance won back a lot of that ground.

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