Colin Powell, who as secretary of state famously made the case for war against Iraq in 2003 with an impassioned speech at the United Nations Security Council, was more sceptical about the evidence he used to justify the US-led invasion than previously known, according to a memoir by Kofi Annan, the secretary-general at the time.
Six weeks after the Iraq invasion, Mr Annan wrote, Mr Powell visited his 38th-floor office at the UN to privately exult with him over news that US forces believed they had found mobile laboratories in Iraq that the administration claimed were used by Saddam Hussein to make weapons of mass destruction - the main reason for the war.
''Kofi, they've made an honest man of me,'' Mr Annan quoted Mr Powell as telling him.
Mr Annan wrote that ''the relief - and the exhaustion - was palpable. I could not help but smile along with my friend, and wanted to share in his comfort'', even though Mr Annan was far from convinced. Still, he wrote, ''I could only be impressed by the resilience of this man, who had endured so much to argue for a war he clearly did not believe in.''
Efforts to reach Mr Powell for comment about the passage were not immediately successful. Peggy Cifrino, his assistant, said he was travelling and contacting her only intermittently.
By now many books have been written on the time before the Iraq war, in which no weapons of mass destruction were found. Mr Powell's role, which some historians say irreparably harmed his credibility and derailed his political career, has also been well documented.
But the encounter between the two men, as reprised by the former secretary-general, offered a new insight into the degree of doubt Mr Powell harboured.
In a telephone interview from his Geneva office, Mr Annan, 74, said he had decided to use that anecdote in the opening chapter of his new book, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace, because Iraq had been such an important issue during his tenure, which lasted from 1997 through the end of 2006.
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