By Laura Brown
Washington File Staff Writer

A day following President Bush's address to the United Nations General Assembly making the case for action on Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he would "make the case once again" as he begins consultations with his international counterparts.

Appearing as a guest on three morning talk shows September 13, the secretary pressed for UN members to reflect on the seriousness of President Bush's message and specifically for UN Security Council members to support firm resolutions "that hold Iraq to account."

The resolutions "have to be tough, they have to have deadlines on them, and they cannot be resolutions of the kind that we've had in the past that the Iraqis can simply walk away from with impunity," Powell said in an interview with Paula Zahn on CNN.

Powell said President Bush's September 12 address to the United Nations was meant "to lay out a case against a regime and an individual leading that regime that for ten years has violated UN instructions, has violated international law."

"Everybody has been suggesting that the United States should present its case to the world community, and that's what the president did," Powell said. "He put the problem square where the problem belongs, before the UN Security Council," he added.

Asked by Jane Clayson on CBS's "This Morning" about the level of international support for Bush's stand, Powell said, "We have to understand, the president gave the speech late yesterday morning; it takes time for that information to be sent back to capitals, for cabinets and prime ministers and presidents to reflect on it."

In the course of the days ahead, the secretary said, he will consult with his colleagues in the Security Council to "lay down some ideas," and then "next week the hard work begins, the heavy lifting begins."

Among the issues to decide is whether and how weapons inspectors could be effective in gauging the military capabilities of Saddam Hussein's regime. Powell told CNN's Zahn, "inspections in and of themselves won't solve the problem entirely, but they are a tool that can be used." He said Vice President Dick Cheney "was correct in saying we have to be skeptical and we should not think just because you got inspectors back in [that] this problem is solved."

On the question of military action in Iraq, Powell stressed that "the president did not come to the United Nations yesterday to declare war." He noted, however, that President Bush has not ruled out the option of using military means in Iraq, even if the United States must do so alone.

"The president has made it clear that he views Saddam Hussein and the actions of the Iraqi regime to be absolutely abhorrent and not something that can be looked away from, and so he has always preserved the option to act unilaterally to protect the United States," Powell told CBS's Clayson.

Asked by ABC's Charles Gibson on "Good Morning America" about the notion of regime change in Iraq, Powell said the president "still believes that regime change would be the best answer."

The secretary, saying he would not prejudge the outcome of discussions with his colleagues in the international community, maintained that "we have seen nothing so far with respect to past Iraqi behavior that would suggest that we should abandon what we believe is the best outcome, and that is a regime change. So we'll see how this unfolds in the weeks ahead."

Speaking with CNN's Zahn, Powell expressed confidence that "the UN will take it much more seriously this time around because of the determination shown by President Bush to make sure we do something this time and not let Saddam Hussein walk away."

"We must come together to deal with this crisis or it tends to make the United Nations somewhat irrelevant," the secretary said. "We can't have an irrelevant United Nations. It's a powerful, important international organization. It has a mandate from its founding charter that instructs it to deal with issues like this. And that is the point that President Bush was making yesterday," said Powell.