Powell calls on Kerry to back up claim

By Paul Farhi
The Washington Post

	ELISE AMENDOLA / AP Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts raises his arms to cheering supporters at the end of a campaign rally at Akron University in Akron, Ohio, yesterday.
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BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., ran into some tough questioning yesterday — from, among others, Secretary of State Colin Powell — about his assertion last week that he had met with foreign leaders who support his candidacy over President Bush.

Powell, who rarely makes overtly partisan comments, challenged Kerry to name one such official.

"I don't know what foreign leaders Senator Kerry is talking about," Powell said on "Fox News Sunday." "It's an easy charge, an easy assertion to make. But if he feels it is that important an assertion to make, he ought to list some names. If he can't list names, then perhaps he should find something else to talk about."

Kerry refused to disclose which foreign dignitaries he had met with, or when, during a town-hall meeting and later in a news conference at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem.

He was repeatedly called "a liar" during the public forum by a heckler, Cedric Brown, who interrupted Kerry's comments on health care, education and the economy to raise questions about the claim of foreign endorsements. Under questioning by Kerry, Brown described himself as a Bush supporter.

At a fund-raiser in South Florida last Monday, Kerry said: "I've met with foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but, boy, they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this. You've got to beat this guy (President Bush). We need a new policy.' Things like that."

Kerry said yesterday he wouldn't disclose names because doing so could injure those nations' relations with Bush. But he repeated that he had met with, and talked to, foreign representatives about the election.

"The point is that all across the world, America and Americans are meeting with a new level of hostility" because of the policies of the Bush administration, Kerry said. "... I think anyone who has traveled abroad knows how other countries have lost respect for us, how we've fumbled the goodwill we had after September 11."

In a survey of world opinion released in June by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, people in most countries surveyed rated Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair more highly than Bush. The survey found only modest percentages agreeing that Bush will do the right thing with regard to international relations.
 
Kerry said his criticism referred specifically to Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, the administration's efforts to stop nuclear proliferation and its decision not to sign the Kyoto global-warming treaty that President Clinton's administration helped negotiate.

Powell's comments were surprising because he usually stays out of political spats or activities. Although appointed to the top diplomat's job, Powell did almost no campaigning for Bush during the 2000 election.

Kerry, a four-term senator, has unofficially clinched the Democratic nomination. He campaigned yesterday in Pennsylvania and Ohio, both considered "swing" states for the 2004 election and both hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs.

Kerry was put on the defensive by Brown, the heckler, during an otherwise routine meeting with voters not far from the once-mighty Bethlehem Steel factory.

Brown kept pressing Kerry to reveal which foreign officials he was talking about. He drew catcalls and boos from the pro-Kerry crowd but kept at it when Kerry told the crowd, "This is what democracy is all about."

Afterward, Brown, who described himself as a small-business owner and a graduate of West Point, said "If he's lying about something so simple as this, you have to wonder whether a President Kerry would be an honest person. I wanted to give him an opportunity to defend his lie."

Kerry declined to say what rank or position the people he met with held, describing them only as "people at different levels."

At the town-hall meeting, Kerry accused Bush of turning his back on the nation's 41 million uninsured and of offering "misleading attacks" instead of health-care answers.

He renewed his call for monthly debates with Bush on the campaign's "big choices," saying one of the biggest was health care. He accused Bush of trying to obscure his lack of solutions by attacking Kerry's plan.

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