WASHINGTON, January 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that the U.S. might never present any evidence it claims it has of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction even in the event of war, as reports reveal that Washington is planning to bring senior Iraqi officials to trial “if and when” there is a war.

According to the U.K. newspaper, the Times, Rumsfeld suggested that disclosing evidence to the world or even the U.N. may jeopardize any military action by revealing what the U.S. knows.

Brushing aside international demands for proof of the danger of the present Iraqi regime, Rumsfeld said that the safest option for an effective military campaign was for the U.S. to maintain “secrecy”.

U.S. President George W. Bush would be the one who would make the final decision regarding the disclosure of the evidence, Rumsfeld said, adding that “To the extent that prior to using force he were to reveal intelligence information in a way that damaged the ability to conduct the conflict, it would be, needless to say, unfortunately, risky for the coalition forces’ lives engaged.

“And I don’t know what calibration would be made there. On the one hand, you have the advantage of persuading the publics in the world and countries of the facts of the matter, and on the other hand, by so doing, you weaken your ability to do that which you have decided to do,” the Times quoted him as saying.

Using the same excuses for not presenting any so-called evidence against the Al-Qaeda network that the U.S. claimed it had when it attacked Afghanistan in the beginning of the “war on terror”, Rumsfeld’s remarks will surely unsettle potential U.S. allies and present an obstacle in assembling a coalition for any war against Iraq.

Some Arab states have said that any military action would need the authorization of the U.N. if they are to cooperate by opening their military bases and airspace to the U.S. and British military, the Times said.

But the prospects of a second U.N. resolution, to follow the 15-0 vote that authorized the present inspection regime in Iraq, would be hampered if the U.S. was unwilling to share its intelligence, the paper added.

Meanwhile, according to the United Press International (UPI), the United States is laying plans to try senior Iraqi officials in the event of a war on Baghdad.

Trials would be “more likely an international effort,” a senior administration official told UPI this week. “ ... The modality, how this process would be conducted, has not been decided.”

Bush’s national security team is considering a variety of trial venues, including “the U.N., The Hague, ad hoc tribunal, military tribunal,” the senior official said. “A post-conflict Iraqi government could conduct some of these trials itself,” UPI reported on its website.

The United States has repeatedly warned Iraq that if its commanders order the use of chemical or biological weapons against U.S. or allied forces they would be held to account for war crimes, UPI said.

Charles Hill, a distinguished fellow in diplomacy at the Hoover Institution, told UPI that there are actually three avenues the administration could follow for post-conflict trials in Iraq.

The first would be war criminal trials, along the lines of “Nuremberg or Japanese trials after World War II, for commanders who would be charged with violating the rules of war. (The war criminal trials) would be conducted by the U.S. or the coalition.”

Or there could be some kind of international tribunal such as those held under U.N. auspices for atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia.

“That was a breakthrough in a sense,” Hill, who is also a lecturer at Yale University, said, “because it was the first time that the U.N., the so-called international community as an entirety, agreed to conduct what was in effect a war crimes trial. Before that, (such trials were) always conducted by the victors.”