In Old World, Powell Seeks New Era of Cooperation

On his farewell trip through Europe this week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered a consistent message in the Old World’s corridors of power: America wants to move beyond the damaging rift over Iraq and reach out to begin a new era of cooperation.

At successive meetings in Sofia, Brussels and The Hague, during which he saw most of the continent’s foreign ministers, Powell spoke about the United States’ desire for reconciliation.

For the most part, Europe’s diplomats listened politely, smiled -- and offered little.

Powell also engaged in a quieter, less conventional kind of diplomacy, one that yielded no grand initiatives, but that could end up doing much to repair America’s tarnished image in Europe.

In The Hague on Friday, Powell met for nearly an hour with 50 high school and college students in a session that was part fatherly pep talk, part defense of controversial U.S. actions in the world.

He did the same thing Tuesday in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, and will hold a third such session today in Rabat, Morocco, where he will end his trip at a forum of Arab and major industrial nations convened to study economic and political reform in the Middle East.

Meeting with youths has been a frequent part of Powell’s travels as secretary of State, but such encounters carried special meaning on his continental swan song.

In Europe, where anti-American sentiments have given rise to caricatures of President Bush as a gunslinging cowboy, the image of the U.S. secretary of State quietly explaining America’s actions and exchanging easy banter with young people sends a countervailing message.

Leaning casually on a stool in front of the group, the top U.S. diplomat offered a different portrayal of post-9/11 America.

Friday’s meeting was taped and later shown to a national evening television audience.

The session in Sofia had no TV cameras and resulted in a more relaxed, freewheeling session. The participants were selected by local U.S. embassies.

Jess L. Baily, public affairs officer at the American Embassy in The Hague, said the students at Friday’s session were not coached, nor were any limits placed on the questions they could ask.

A Dutch student suggested that Powell might title his memoirs of serving under Bush, “My Journey With George” -- a play on Powell’s popular autobiography, “My American Journey.”

“Yeah,” Powell responded, to the laughter of other participants.

Occasionally, news comes out of these sessions.

After a particularly harsh exchange in Sofia with his Russian counterpart, Sergei V. Lavrov, over the crisis in Ukraine, Powell used his response to a student’s question to lower the political temperature, describing in soothing language the underlying strength of the ties between the U.S. and Russia.

On Friday, after he was asked about America’s relationship with Iran, Powell provided new details of a dinner conversation with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi at an international conference last month in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt.

“What we talked about was the fact that they have a young population [and] every year, more and more people need jobs in Iran,” Powell said.

But many of the students at this week’s sessions questioned America’s decision to invade Iraq and whether U.S. actions in the last four years had made the world safer.

Whatever the question, Powell worked patiently to set out the Bush administration’s rationale.

On Friday, he found it difficult to change minds.

Demet Yazilitas, a 24-year-old Dutch national of Turkish descent who is studying European and international law, said she was impressed by Powell personally and inspired by his life story.

Still, Yazilitas’ opposition to America’s actions, including the war in Iraq, remained unshaken.

“I just did not have the feeling anything new or different was said to change my viewpoints,” she said.