WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin Powell will present the UN Security Council with new evidence of Iraqi defiance of disarmament demands on February 5, U.S. President George W. Bush said Tuesday.

The move, aimed at overcoming opposition on the council to military action against Iraq, would set the stage for a possible reprise to a dramatic 1962 Cold War confrontation over the Cuban missile crisis.

"The United States will ask the UN Security Council to convene on February 5 to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world," Bush said in his state of the nation speech to Congress.

"Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors and its links to terrorist groups," he said.

"We will consult, but let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not disarm, for the safety of our people and the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him," Bush said.

Earlier, senior U.S. officials said Powell would lay out previously undisclosed and classified intelligence at a special UN meeting to try to convince a skeptical world of the need to disarm Iraq by force.

They refused to describe what the evidence might be but Bush gave a hint when he described a litany of Iraqi violations dealing with poison gases, anthrax, the concealment of mobile weapons laboratories and its refusal to allow U2 spy plane overflights.

Powell, in a weekend interview with European journalists, said new "intelligence products" would be released soon.

In those comments, he made specific reference to the riveting debate at the UN Security Council on October 25, 1962 in which the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, presented the world with aerial photographs of Soviet missiles and silo construction on Cuba.

"We talk about it a lot," he said of the confrontation between Stevenson and then-Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Valerian Zorin.

"But whether there will be a `Stevenson photo' or `Stevenson presentation' that would be as persuasive as Adlai Stevenson was in 1962, that I can't answer," Powell said.

"I would love to have that kind of material to present and we are seeing what we can do, what we might find in the next couple of weeks," he said.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy, faced with skyrocketing nuclear tension as the Soviet Union denied missiles were present on Cuba, instructed Stevenson to display the U.S. photos to the Security Council.

Stevenson, in a memorable exchange familiar from Grainy, black-and-white television images, demanded an explanation from the obviously unprepared Zorin. "Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the USSR has placed and is placing medium and intermediate range missiles and sites in Cuba?" Stevenson asked. "Yes or no? don't wait for the translation." He then presented the photographs as Zorin protested, arguing: "I am not in an American court room, sir, and therefore I do not wish to answer a question that is put to me in the fashion in which a prosecutor does."

But the damage to Soviet credibility was done and the debate became one of the crucial turning points of the 13-day missile crisis.

The senior officials scoffed at suggestions they could re-stage such a unique event, noting in particular that there was no way to predict whether Iraq would send a representative to any meeting.

"We try to learn from history, not re-enact it," said one.

But Powell, in the weekend interview, appeared to relish the idea of repeating the 1962 debate, noting the tremendous impact it had. "The fact of the matter is he (Zorin) was in something worse than an American court, he was in the court of public opinion and everybody could see it," Powell said. (AFP)