US Secretary of State Colin Powell returns to the UN Security Council on Wednesday with a speech that is expected to start the endgame in the 12-year saga of international efforts to disarm Iraq.

Flanked by Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, Powell will seek to convince the council through a 90-minute "multimedia presentation" that Iraq has lied to the UN inspectors who started work November 27.

The council convenes at 15:30 GMT in the presence of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Besides Powell, 11 foreign ministers are to take part, including Joschka Fischer of Germany, who will chair the proceedings.

Iraq, represented by its ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed al-Douri, will have the right of reply after the council members have spoken.

Powell has scheduled an intense series of bilateral meetings with other council members whose support will be needed when the United States decides to seek UN authorization to use force against Iraq.

He met his Chinese counterpart, Tang Jiaxuan, soon after he arrived from Washington at noon Tuesday, and was to meet Fischer before the council session.

Powell was to meet other ministers separately Wednesday after a council lunch hosted by Fischer.

Diplomats said the United States could count on the votes of only three other members if a draft resolution to authorize force were put to the vote today.

Nine "yes" votes are needed, and any of the five permanent members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - can veto a draft.

But while Powell has already said he will not present the council with a "smoking gun" as proof of Iraqi malfeasance, diplomats said they expected the weight of council opinion to shift in coming weeks.

"How things will develop will depend very much on the upcoming visit" to Baghdad this weekend by the chief arms inspectors, Germany's ambassador to the UN, Gunter Pleuger, told reporters Tuesday.

Hans Blix, the chief chemical and biological weapons inspector, and Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, are due in Iraq on Saturday and will report to the council on February 14.

"It is the council that will have to decide in the end whether the inspections have been successful or whether there has been material breach," Pleuger said.

But, he added, the inspectors were "delivering the facts and therefore February 14 is an important date, more important than an intermediate update." Powell on Tuesday huddled with top aides behind closed doors at New York's famed Waldorf-Astoria hotel, rehearsing and refining his upcoming presentation.

"They are making sure all the material is clear and checking all the facts," a senior State Department official said.

Powell met twice over the weekend with Central Intelligence Agency officials, including Tenet.

"Everything in the presentation is based on solid sources," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Intense secrecy has surrounded the details and even the exact format of Powell's presentation, which he said Monday would include a "convincing case" that Baghdad continues to defy UN disarmament demands.

Various reports have said Powell will put on display -- in audio, visual and print format -- material from some of Washington's most prized intelligence sources, including electronic intercepts of conversations in which Iraqi officials are heard ordering and gloating over their efforts to hinder the work of UN arms inspectors.

However, US officials have steadfastly refused to discuss the presentation in public.

The senior State Department official said Powell would offer damning evidence of Iraq's pattern of deceit and deception with the inspectors, its efforts to hide banned weapons, links between Saddam's regime and terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, and its dismal humanitarian record - Sapa-AFP.