WASHINGTON — Hawai'i Sen. Daniel Inouye strongly defended the honor of Sen. Ted Stevens at the Alaska senator's corruption trial yesterday, saying he's never heard of his friend telling a lie.

"His reputation for truthfulness and honesty is what, sir?" defense attorney Brendan Sullivan asked.

"Absolute," Inouye answered emphatically.

Stevens, 84, is accused of lying on Senate forms to conceal more than $250,000 in renovations on his cabin and other gifts from Bill Allen, his close friend and former chief of a major Alaska oil services and construction company, VECO Corp.

But Inouye, who said he's so close to Stevens and his family that the Alaska senator's daughter calls him "Uncle Dan," told prosecutors that he's "never heard of him lying under oath."

"I've never known of him to lie," Inouye said, "and I wouldn't expect him to."

It remained unclear whether Stevens, the straight-talking, longest-serving Senate Republican and patriarch of Alaska politics for generations, would take the stand in his own defense. He has languished in the federal courtroom as a Democratic opponent back home mounts a strong challenge to the seat he's held for 40 years.

The GOP icon's lawyers started their defense of him by calling his friends and constituents to testify in front of the jury to the senator's reputation of honesty and truthfulness. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to testify today.

Inouye, a Democrat, is one of Stevens' best friends, with the two World War II veterans calling each other "brother" and Inouye going so far as to hold a fundraising lunch for Stevens in Washington in April.

The Pentagon budget gets done quickly in the Senate because of Stevens' reputation for honesty among senators, Inouye said. "This community has absolute faith in Ted Stevens," Inouye said. "His word is good."

Stevens has temporarily stepped down from those positions while he's on trial. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison on each of seven charges, though under federal sentencing guidelines he probably would receive much less prison time, if any.

Inouye, who as a Senate chairman is used to asking questions on Capitol Hill instead of answering them, briefly sparred with prosecutor Nicholas Marsh, who tried to get him to answer a hypothetical question about whether he would change his opinion of a person who has lied.

If Marsh was talking about Stevens, "I don't know Ted Stevens ever told a lie," Inouye said.

Marsh kept trying to ask the hypothetical question, until Inouye finally said: "I'm not inclined to respond to hypothetical questions."

Defense lawyers insist that Stevens was too busy in Washington to pay close attention to the renovation of the cabin near Anchorage, which his wife oversaw. They also say their client assumed that the $160,000 they paid to another contractor covered everything.

The prosecution, which rested its case earlier yesterday, relied on testimony by several VECO workers who, starting in 2000, labored for months to transform a modest A-frame cabin into a two-story home with wraparound decks, new electric wiring and plumbing, a sauna and a master-bedroom balcony.

Prosecutors called as their star witness Allen, who has pleaded guilty to bribery in a corruption investigation resulting in convictions of several Alaska legislators.