Pablo Picasso’s striking anti-war painting ‘Guernica’ hangs at the United Nations in New York, a sobering tapestry greeting visitors to the offices of the U.N. Security Council. But yesterday, as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to the Security Council, ‘Guernica’ was nowhere to be seen, concealed behind a blue curtain and a row of flags. The U.N. insists that the cover-up was in reponse to the needs of television cameras, but Peter Goddard reports that it “may have been prompted by U.N. realization that images of the mural’s vivid anti-war message were televised world-wide when it appeared as a backdrop to the Jan. 27 interim report by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix.”