Powell's 'big moment': Can he sway a skeptical world?

He has a passion for weekend garage mechanics, preferring to tinker with the fleet of old Volvos he's assembled instead of the new PT Cruiser he says is too computerized for his abilities.

And although the grease will certainly be gone, Secretary of State Colin Powell is employing the same zest for problem-solving and accomplishment as he takes the Bush administration's case against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime to the United Nations Security Council Wednesday.

State Department officials warned going in that the appearance might not produce an "Adlai Stevenson moment" - referring to the dramatic visual evidence of Soviet missile sites in Cuba that the former US delegate to the UN presented to a doubting world four decades ago. Yet everyone from foreign ministers who have rearranged already-full agendas for the speech, to more common folk around the globe who have developed a respect for America's top diplomat, realize Mr. Powell's speech may well set the course of events for some time to come.

• Will Powell's evidence convince a long slate of doubters that Mr. Hussein has failed the cooperation test, that his regime has links to Al Qaeda, and that he must now be taken on with more than diplomatic means?

• Will his appearance be the turning point that allows the US to assemble something like the "broad coalition" that Powell, a decade ago as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saw as crucial to the Gulf War?

• And will Powell, long seen as a lone "multilateralist" on the Bush national security team, keep the Security Council united on Iraq - or will it split, becoming what even he now foresees as potentially irrelevant to an Iraq conflict?

To a great extent, what makes Powell's appearance so compelling is that the Bush administration's "reluctant warrior" - the man who persuaded President Bush to take the Iraq conflict to the international community when other, more personally close advisers were counseling a UN-free approach - is now squarely behind the tough line.

Gone are the days when pundits and analysts picked at every suggestion of dissonance between "Powell the dove" and "the hawks" - Donald Rumsfeld & Co. Wednesday, it is Powell who warns that the diplomatic window is fast closing - and precisely because it is Powell saying it, people listen.

"People may disagree with him, but they never question his integrity or dead honesty," says George Shultz, secretary of state under President Reagan. "If he says something, they know he believes it - and means it."

The importance Powell gives to working within the UN process and building a coalition for US-led interventions can be gleaned from his past experience.

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