WASHINGTON -- In the noisy public debate over whether the United States should attack Iraq, one prominent voice has hardly uttered a word.

Dovish Secretary of State Colin Powell, a beacon of hope for those who oppose unilateral military action, has been lying low since the middle of August and will be out of town next week on an unrelated mission to Africa that has otherwise attracted little interest within the administration.

Powell spent last week on vacation, partly in the Hamptons on long island, New York -- a trendy venue which the Texan ranch-owner President George W. Bush has mocked -- and so far this week he has kept to his Washington office with no public appearances, Reuters reported.

The retired army general, who served as national security adviser to president Ronald Reagan, was not included in a meeting at the ranch of top Bush aides on U.S. Defense policy last week.

So is Powell battling behind the scenes for a more multilateralist approach to Iraq, for example through a final attempt to seek a UN resolution or by trying to rustle up some allies to help overthrow President Saddam Hussein? Or is he merely awaiting his marching orders from Bush and his hawkish advisers, who say the united states has no choice but to get rid of Saddam before Iraq acquires nuclear weapons which might threaten the United States? Before he took office in the Bush administration in January 2001, Powell, one of the most popular public figures in America in the last decade, was perhaps best known in policy circles for the military doctrine that bears his name.

this stipulated that the United States should not fight unless it has clear political objectives and can bring an overwhelming military advantage to the battle.

--- Vietnam Veteran --- He also had a reputation for being reluctant to use of force. According to published accounts, after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 Powell, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at the time, at first favored a limited military operation to protect Saudi Arabia from Iraqi encroachment.

That could have abandoned Kuwait to permanent Iraqi occupation, an option which the first President Bush rejected in favor of the successful campaign to drive Iraqi forces back across the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border.

A veteran of the Vietnam war, Powell also had doubts about the disastrous U.S. engagement in Somalia in 1993, a mission which did not meet either of his conditions for success.

But his history may count against him in the current debate, as the more bellicose faction tries to discredit the cautious faction by saying they proved wrong in the past.

"President Bush has been deluged with advice about Iraq, much of it coming from those with a record of 100 percent error on the subject," former secretary of state Alexander Haig wrote in the ***Washington Post*** on Wednesday.

Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, a driving force behind the pro-attack faction, routinely denounces what he calls the misconceptions of the past, for example the belief that U.S. military intervention endangers friendly Arab governments.

--- Diplomacy Premature--- As the debate heated up this week, the State Department kept its distance, played down war talk and gave the impression that it was merely awaiting orders from the White House.

The State Department said on Tuesday it was too early to start enlisting foreign support for an attack because President Bush had not yet decided on a course of action.

"At this moment, we're not selling a war plan because the president's not decided what option he wants to pursue," spokesman Richard Boucher told a briefing.

"There's no option to enlist people's support for.

There's no war drum to beat. There's no particular course of action that we're trying to sell right now," he added.

One U.S. official said that in the end Powell was "a good soldier" and would carry out whatever policy the White House decides on, as he has in the past with Middle East policies which run counter to those he had advocated.

Powell himself has said repeatedly that he "serves at the president's pleasure" and has no intention of resigning.

Just because he often appears to be in the minority in the Bush administration's foreign policy debates, he is not necessarily always on the losing side.

He won his way on the need for dialogue with North Korea and at points in the tortuous tale of Washington's Middle East diplomacy, he has persuaded bush to promise U.S. engagement.

But his mission to Africa next week, to head the U.S. delegation to the Earth Summit in Johannesburg and to visit Angola and Gabon, does give the impression that he is out of the policy-making mainstream for the moment.