In a blow against justification for the Iraq war, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate committee that there was little likelihood Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The testimony by Powell at the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee must be an expression of the Bush administration's intention to close this issue.

But the contention that Iraq had WMD cannot be put behind us simply because the Saddam regime has been overthrown.

We must remember that the United States cited the UN Security Council's resolution that called for the abolition of Iraq's WMD as the justification for invasion. And it was Secretary of State Powell who, in February last year ardently warned of an imminent Iraqi threat.

The United States invaded Iraq, after all, without a Security Council resolution that explicitly approved such a move.

Countries that nonetheless supported the United States, including Japan, asked for the understanding of their peoples by contending that Iraq had WMD.

It appears, however, that Iraq did not possess such weapons.

As the United States argues, Saddam's government was a dangerous dictatorial regime.

But this war is proving too costly for the United States and the world.

Will Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi repent of what he has said and done? He consistently said WMD would be found sooner or later and that the war was justified.

The prime minister continued with such a perception of the Iraq war at the extraordinary Diet session last month. But he can no longer take such an attitude.