LONDON, May 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered a sharp attack on European political leaders, accusing them of "bashing" America's war on terrorism, days before U.S President George Bush sets off on a tour of several European capitals, news agencies reported.

 In an interview, published Saturday, May 18, with the British daily newspaper Guardian, Powell claimed that contrary to the dominant European viewpoint, U.S. foreign policy under Bush had been a resounding success.

Powell said that European criticism of Bush's "axis of evil" speech in January, seen by many observers as marking the start of a decline in U.S.-European relations, had been misplaced.

"The President said 'axis of evil' and it was amazing what happened after that in terms of the criticism that came our way," Powell said.

"The President came up with a clever way of capturing them all and guess what - the North Koreans now want to talk to us. The Iraqis are trying to pretend that they're behaving better."

Powell said anti-Americanism in Europe partly explained a rise of anti-European sentiments in the U.S. press. "To some extent it reflects the fact that we get bashed all the time. I think it may be something of a counter to the speed with which Europe always finds fault - some in Europe," Powell said.

"There are some in Europe who are quick to find fault with any position that the United States might take that we believe is a correct, principled position ... so I think there is something of a reverse spin coming back on the rhetoric."

Bush, accompanied by his top diplomat, goes to Europe at a time of considerable transatlantic distrust between the U.S. and its European allies over what Europe believes is increasing American unilateralism, and what the U.S. sees as a lack of European resolve in dealing with terrorism, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The Secretary of State's criticism is all the more pointed bearing in mind that he is usually regarded as the most Europe-friendly figure within the Bush administration, according to the Guardian.

Further evidence of the growing rift between the U.S. and Europe came Friday night when the French president, Jacques Chirac, tore into what he called American "unilateralism". In one of his most hard-hitting indictments of the Bush administration, Chirac said its recent decisions to impose steel tariffs and raise farm subsidies would harm the world's poorest nations, according to the British daily.

Speaking at the end of a European Union summit with Latin American leaders in Madrid, Chirac said that what the U.S. was giving to developing countries in aid, it was now taking back in the form of tariffs.

Stressing his views, Powell pointed to the imminent enlargement of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) around the borders of Russia and Moscow's acquiescence in the proposed U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD) system as positive achievements that flowed directly from America's determined stand.

Powell added to his critique of Europe by saying that Moscow's acceptance of NMD and Washington's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty (on June 13), showed that European predictions of global chaos as a result were misplaced. "The ABM treaty is about to lapse. The geo-strategic situation is not collapsing and no arms race is breaking out."

He dismissed much of the European criticism as intellectual "churning" and said the transatlantic relationship was fundamentally strong. He insisted that the experience of the Afghan war demonstrated that NATO still had an important function.