EEUU

Powell defiende el rol de la diplomacia

Autor: Steven R. Weisman

Fecha: 23/12/2003

Traductor: Celeste Murillo, especial para P.I.

Fuente: New York Times

Powell Defends Diplomatic Role

This is another season of frustration for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

After a difficult year of trying with mixed success to placate American allies over the Iraq war, Mr. Powell is recovering from surgery while former Secretary of State James A. Baker III has been representing the Bush administration in high-level meetings in Europe on Iraq's future.

When Saddam Hussein was captured, Mr. Powell was notified not by President Bush but by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. The breakthrough with Libya was announced at the White House by Mr. Bush last Friday, while the secretary of state was recuperating at home.

As he enters the final year of President Bush's current term in office, while refusing to address the question of whether he would serve during a second term, Mr. Powell says, however, that he is more determined than ever to counter the perception that diplomacy in general — and his own role in particular — have been marginalized in an administration obsessed with war and terrorism.

"When you have a story like the Iraq story, which so dominated everything for most of the year, the message of what we are trying to do could not overcome the daily news that was coming in," Mr. Powell said in a telephone interview. "I think there are a lot of things we've done that sometimes get missed in the rush of business."

Many of his recent pronouncements have seemed combative, defensive and wistful, reflecting the paradox that although he is the best known member of Mr. Bush's cabinet, and a popular figure around the world, he evidently feels his accomplishments have been grossly misunderstood.

In an article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, one of many summations of policy offered in recent weeks, Mr. Powell declares that contrary to popular perception, the United States has worked closely with other countries to confront the threat of terrorism, nuclear proliferation and instability.

"U.S. strategy is widely accused of being unilateralist by design," Mr. Powell wrote. "It isn't. It is often accused of being imbalanced in favor of military methods. It isn't. It is frequently described as being obsessed with terrorism and hence biased toward preemptive war on a global scale. It most certainly is not."

In the interview, Mr. Powell acknowledged a certain disappointment at having to set the record straight so late in the administration. "It's been frustrating for me at times, and I have been trying in recent months, once Iraq got under way, to talk in these broad terms," he said. "I find you've got to keep chipping away at it."

There have been frustrations almost since he took office. But Mr. Powell argues that while the public has focused on the administration's doctrine of pre-emptive war and going it alone if necessary, he has forged solid alliances behind American policies on North Korea and Iran and worked closely with the United Nations on Iraq.

Too few people have recognized, he said, that American relations with China and Russia are better than they have been in many years, and that there is a partnership with Europe on a range of issues, from Afghanistan to the India-Pakistan conflict.

"I think we have managed China, Russia and Europe rather well if you look at where we are at the end of the year since the beginning of the year," Mr. Powell said.

His other proud achievements, he says, are the increase in financing to
combat AIDS and to channel foreign aid to poor countries generally. He is also proud of his involvement in trying to resolve such disparate regional conflicts as civil wars in Sudan and Liberia and in pressing for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

But there have been other signs of Mr. Powell's unhappiness over how the war in Iraq has gone, and how his reputation has suffered from various disclosures, including the fact that the Pentagon had rejected the State Department's advice to plan for problems for the American occupation of Iraq.

There have been difficulties in getting a major role for the United Nations in Iraq's transition to self-rule. Finally, Mr. Powell has been stung by repeated criticism of his declaration at the United Nations last February that Iraq's weapons programs posed an imminent threat.
He has defended his use of intelligence information in that speech but acknowledged that he had expected stocks of chemical and biological weapons to have turned up by now.

To his aides, he rarely lets his frustrations spill into bitterness. He also views Mr. Baker not as a threat but as a potential ally in pushing for greater partnership with other nations on Iraq.

"He's the most fundamentally optimistic person I've ever met," said an associate. "There really is a sense with him that every day is a new day. He always believes that, whatever he's given, he can make it better."
These days Mr. Powell is on the phone constantly from his home in McLean, Va., letting his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, serve as the State Department's public face. Aides say Mr. Powell has brought the same businesslike attitude toward his cancer.

"He's always known he was high-risk," said an aide, referring to the high rate of prostate cancer among African-American men. "He's had himself tested periodically. A couple months ago, a test showed there was cancer in there, and he was able to schedule his surgery when there would be time." On Friday, a pathology report showed that his cancer was limited to the prostate, clearing the way for a full recovery.

Only rarely has Mr. Powell shed light on any interior dissatisfactions he may have experienced in three years. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Powell volunteered that one of the things he most admired about one of his predecessors, George C. Marshall, was that he did not resign even after his advice not to recognize Israel in 1948 was rejected.

Does that mean, though, that Mr. Powell has even thought about resigning, such as when President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq? Not at all, his aides say. Mr. Powell all along believed that war was justified if Saddam Hussein continued to flout international demands to come clean with his weapons.

"It is not as if he was against the war," said an aide to Mr. Powell. "It is just that the war was not his priority. It was Rumsfeld's and Cheney's priority. Powell's priority was to make sure the war was carried out in the right way."

Though most people around him assume that he would not serve a second term as secretary of state, Mr. Powell, in the interview, continued with his practice of not talking about whether he would stay on if Mr. Bush wins re-election. He did say emphatically that he expected Mr. Bush to be returned to office.

To Mr. Powell, there has never been any doubt that President Bush supports diplomacy at least as enthusiastically as he has supported going to war when that became necessary. "He's been a magnificent wartime president," said Mr. Powell. "But he and I talked about the importance of diplomacy even before he took office."

"A war tends to clear the sinuses," Mr. Powell concluded. "It means that you also can't spend as much time on other things. But you'll notice that when he announced the Libya settlement on Friday, he emphasized the importance of diplomacy."

Judging from his recent comments, diplomacy is what Mr. Powell feels this administration should be remembered for.