Powell: alone we stand but in the right

Critics have been proved wrong, says US secretary of state.

Colin Powell is slightly late, and he is full of apologies. But he also points out that the reason for his lateness only serves to demonstrate the wrong-headedness of the Bush administration's carping European critics.

The US secretary of state has just come from the White House, where the president has been meeting the Slovenian prime minister, Janez Drnovsek. Would a unilateralist, go-it-alone government spend time on such encounters? Mr Powell asks.

"The suggestion that somehow the United States goes its own merry way without consulting with Europe is a canard. I spend an enormous amount of my time listening to my European colleagues. I can document it with meetings I've attended. I can document it with my phone logs," Mr Powell said.

On several occasions in the course of a 40 minute interview, the secretary of state appeared to be seized with frustration at what he portrayed as a continual barrage of criticism from Europe that had more often than not turned out to be wrong.

"This is an administration and this is a president that has strong beliefs and values. And just because we may not be able to reach an agreement doesn't mean we don't care what everybody else says," he said, sitting below a famously patriotic painting of a determined George Washington crossing the Delaware.

But, he added: "The evidence is also there that sometimes when we strike what we believe is a correct position and we explain it and people don't agree with us it turns out that, a few months or half a year later, maybe we weren't all that wrong."

Mr Powell listed a series of international issues on which the US had stuck to its guns in the face of withering criticism from European allies, only to be proved right.

Exhibit A was the US National Missile Defence (NMD) anti-ballistic system, which now appears to have been accepted as a fact of life by the Russians, somewhat to the embarrassment of European politicians and pundits who had forecast doom.

He said President Vladimir Putin had challenged him. " 'We think you're wrong. We wish you would not do this, but it will not change the strategic reality that we do not feel threatened,' he said, 'and we will continue moving ahead with our strategic dialogue' - and he said the one good piece of news about this is that it will be behind us. We won't have to keep arguing about this."

Mr Powell raised his hands and surveyed the room as if to look for signs of disaster, forecast in Europe. He said: "All of the horrible consequences that some were speculating would befall us have not befallen us, and they almost seem disappointed that all these horrible consequences did not befall us."

He pointed out that not long ago there had been predictions of a major clash with Russia if Nato expanded to include the Baltic states. "You don't hear that any longer."

He defended the US against charges that it was allowing Nato to become a two-tiered partnership because of an imbalance between US and European defence spending.

He said he could not understand why "when we invest a huge amount in our defence structure and have for many, many years in order to be part of an alliance that has served Europe rather well, and yet we manage to draw fire on almost every issue we undertake, not from all our European friends, but from some." He expressed the hope that as Europe moved to the right, some of the disagreements, especially about the division of labour in Nato and over how much the Europeans should be spending on defence, might be eased by an increasing convergence of views.

He said: "My inclination would be that there will be a greater appreciation for the need for defence spending and enhancing the capability of European forces to go do the kind of missions that are likely to be out there for them to do."

He presented the European outcry at President Bush's "axis of evil" speech in January as almost a cultural misunder standing. Americans were just more straightforward, he said.

"We realise that sometimes we Americans speak in certain ways that cause distress, but its not because we're necessarily wrong," Mr Powell said. "All the catastrophic things that were supposed to happen because the president used the line have not happened."

The president "called it clearly", the secretary of state said. "We will continue to take principled positions that we believe are right for the US and right for the issue."

But he was more reticent on the lack of convergence of views with the rest of the administration, in which his diplomatic efforts have been continually second-guessed by hawks. The successes Mr Powell claimed for the Bush administration's preference for global leadership over negotiation have served to undermine his strength within the administration. Over a number of issues, he has found himself in the minority in advocating compromise against hawks who see global accords as unnecessary constraints on US power.

All he would allow was a small smile at the thought that in an administration with strong black and white beliefs, his job was to work on the greys.