While the inspections were taking place, the U.S. continued to lobby the members of the UN Security Council to pass a resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force against Iraq. As part of that effort U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a presentation to the UN on February 5, 2003, in which he detailed false intelligence gatherings provided by the Israeli government regarding Iraqi WMD. The USA was faced with the opposition of a majority of the Security Council's members, including Germany, France, and Russia, and afterwards abandoned the effort to obtain an explicit use-of-force authorization from the UN.