As he has become the leading advocate of a wait-no-longer approach to removing President Saddam Hussein of Iraq from power, Mr. Powell has stopped being the figure Europeans were accustomed to seeing: a sort of un-Bush, certainly an un-Rumsfeld.

Europeans still see Mr. Powell as a voice that articulates how they feel, even as he prepares to present intelligence evidence at the Security Council on Wednesday that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction. But Mr. Powell has lately been showing impatience with the Germans and the French. He has called the United Nations weapons inspection regime virtually irrelevant. He has warned that the United States will proceed against Iraq even if Security Council refuses to pass a new resolution approving military action.

Mr. Powell may still be regarded by many Europeans as the most widely respected figure in the Bush administration, one, for example, who did not dismiss the recalcitrant countries on this continent as "old Europe," as Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld did a week ago, provoking a great deal of both outraged and wry commentary here.

At the same time, the Europeans have been surprised by what they see as his altered role, from Europe's sole senior administration voice in the White House to the administration's most prestigious and trusted advocate in Europe.

For much of the time since last fall, when the United States began pressing for military action against Iraq, Mr. Powell was, in the view of Europeans like the Germans and the French, a natural ally. He was, after all, the author of the Powell Doctrine, the post-Vietnam War idea that the United States should only go to war when its vital interests are at stake and overwhelming force can be exerted on the battlefield.

The French in particular saw Mr. Powell as a friend for having pushed the administration down the road of multilateralism, reining in the impulse of figures epitomized by Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Powell was seen as responsible for getting the Iraq issue before the Security Council and for negotiating the resolution, unanimously approved by the 15-member Council, that created the arms inspection regime.

Even now that Mr. Powell has taken a conspicuously more hawkish stand, as reflected in his speech at the Davos World Economic Forum a week ago, he has not lost his standing as the American official closest to the European way of looking at things.

When Europeans complain about the moves of the Bush administration that most upset them — the rebuke to the Kyoto Treaty on the environment, for example, or the rejection of the International Criminal Court — the name Powell is never mentioned among the names of officials who are less universally admired here: Mr. Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, or Richard Perle, chief of the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon.
"The loyal Mr. Powell no longer sees the Iraq matter as a question that is open," Mr. Bertram said. "At the same time, he can be trusted to bring into the discussion the implications for Europe of a war."

Mr. Powell's role in the debate, aside from keeping the White House informed of European leaders' political problems, represented two principles that are held as important in both halves of a Europe that is divided on the question of Iraq.

First, Mr. Powell is seen as having recognized the European conviction that for the United States to have acted on its own would have grievously damaged the Atlantic alliance, enhanced their Lone Ranger, six-gun image of the United States and intensified anti-American feelings among the European public.

In addition, by taking the Iraq matter to the United Nations, Mr. Powell chose what Europeans accepted as the sole course of action possible to give an eventual war against Iraq an aura of legitimacy.

Essentially, European policy analysts say, only a Security Council resolution would enable some governments in Europe to justify to their own electorates joining the United States in a war. Put another way, Europeans are likely to recognize Iraq's noncompliance with United Nations resolutions as justifying war against Mr. Hussein; they are less likely to see Iraq's weapons programs alone as justifying that course of action.

While Mr. Powell is still given credit for pressing the case for multilateralism, the gap has been growing between him and Europe's most recalcitrant countries, Germany and France, and there has been a personal element to that schism.

While Mr. Powell is still given credit for pressing the case for multilateralism, the gap has been growing between him and Europe's most recalcitrant countries, Germany and France, and there has been a personal element to that schism.

When Mr. Powell said in a television interview that Mr. Villepin's gesture was "unfortunate," the French daily Le Figaro declared that to be "an elegant way of saying that he had been caught in a trap."

The German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung put the matter this way: "Colin Powell, until now, the dutifully moderate secretary of state, has now given up all restraint and publicly shown anger at his French colleague, Dominique de Villepin, who tricked him at the United Nations."

In an interview with The Financial Times in London a few days later, Mr. Powell said, "I have yet to hear from my European colleagues as to when they would be satisfied with respect to inspections."

Mr. Powell added, "The issue is not inspectors; the issue is Iraq."

When Mr. Powell went to the Davos forum in Switzerland last week to deliver a speech in which he said time was running out for Iraq, the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, was conspicuous by his absence. He chose just that moment to travel to four Middle Eastern countries, where he made several comments reiterating German opposition to military action.

"From the point of view of Colin Powell, it must be an absurd comparison," the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel said in an editorial last week. "He takes the trouble to travel halfway around the world to spend two days in Switzerland and canvass support of the Iraq policy of his country. His colleague Joschka Fischer, however, despite being only an hour's flight away, decides instead at precisely this moment to start his own peace campaign, about which even optimists are unsure what it can achieve."