Kerry Remark on Foreign Leaders Faulted
By JODI WILGOREN
ETHLEHEM, Pa., March 14 — A Republican business owner here in this November battleground state and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had the same questions Sunday for Senator John Kerry: Which foreign leaders told you they support your campaign, and when did you meet with them?
The questions, in a volatile exchange at a forum here and in an interview on Fox News Sunday, stemmed from a comment that Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, made last Monday at a Florida fund-raiser. It was the second time in recent days that stray comments by Mr. Kerry diverted attention from his themes of creating jobs and providing health insurance.
"I just want an honest answer," Cedric Brown, 52, who owns a small sign company, told Mr. Kerry.
"Were they people like Blair or were they people like the president of North Korea?" he asked, referring to the British prime minister, Tony Blair. "Why not tell us who it was? Senator, you're making yourself sound like a liar."
Mr. Brown's repeated questions came hours after Mr. Powell said on television that Mr. Kerry's vague claim to have the backing of unnamed foreign leaders was "an easy charge."
"If he feels it is that important an assertion to make, he ought to list some names," Mr. Powell said. "If he can't list names, then perhaps he should find something else to talk about."
Mr. Powell also challenged Mr. Kerry's recent assertions that Mr. Powell had been undermined in foreign policy debates in the Bush administration.
"Name a specific issue where it looks like I have been marginalized," Mr. Powell said.
As his aides have all week, Mr. Kerry refused Sunday to cite any names of foreign officials or describe their rank, telling reporters, "I can't violate any conversation because no one would share something with me again."
Instead, Mr. Kerry disputed the wording of his comment, and tried to change the subject from individual leaders' specific support of his efforts to oust President Bush to a broader deterioration of the United States' international reputation.
"I think the quote, the quote in the comment I made publicly, I believe, was that I `heard from,' that's the direct quote," Mr. Kerry said. "I've likewise had meetings. I've also had conversations. I said I've heard from, that was what I believe I said."
The remark came at a breakfast with about 50 fund-raisers in Florida, after one observed that Europeans were "counting on us" to "get rid of Mr. Bush."
"I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, `You gotta win this, you gotta beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that," Mr. Kerry said, according to a transcript from a reporter who attended the session.
On Sunday, Mr. Kerry said that he had not been abroad since he announced his presidential ambitions in December 2002. In Bethlehem, he told voters he had "had conversations with a number of leaders in the course of the last two years, up until the present moment," and that he had "also had friends of mine who have met with leaders, as recently as the past week I've heard from a couple."
Speaking afterward with reporters, he said the who, when and where was not the point.
"The point is that all across the world Americans and America is meeting with a new level of hostility," Mr. Kerry said, "and that there are relationships that have been broken, and everybody who follows the foreign policy of the United States understands that."
Mr. Brown said he came to the forum to confront Mr. Kerry, in part because of lingering bitterness from the Vietnam era, when as a West Point cadet he was spat on, he said, by antiwar protesters. |
