AVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 24 — Attorney General John Ashcroft came here today to explain to the world's rich, powerful and just plain pushy the Bush administration's tactics in its campaign against terror. In the process, he faced a barrage of questions, not all of them from the usual suspects.

Paul Sagan, an American technology executive from Cambridge, Mass., for instance, told Mr. Ashcroft after lunch in an luxury hotel: "I'm concerned about the way Americans are perceived. Why do you think we are perceived as being not on the right side by a lot of the world? Often we are seen on the wrong side."

Earlier, at a meeting of the World Economic Forum — an annual gathering of some 2,000 business, political, religious and other leaders — Kumi Naidoo, head of an umbrella organization of civil rights groups, took Mr. Ashcroft to task over the way America has conducted its antiterror campaign since Sept. 11.

"We are seeing large levels of alienation across this planet from the war on terrorism," he said in one of several sharp exchanges with Mr. Ashcroft. "What we are saying is that certain fundamental tenets of democracy are being violated."

Kenneth Roth, who is the head of Human Rights Watch U.S.A, said America's "unwillingness to be bound by international standards has bred distrust and is harming the U.S.'s standing in the world and the war against terrorism."

At a separate session yesterday, Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professor at Princeton, said the central issue being debated in the world now was American power and the opposition to it.

Recalling that the World Economic Forum met last year in New York City in part out of sympathy following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Professor Slaughter added, "The agenda has shifted."

The response by American participants to the criticism today seemed to be that the Bush administration can live with dueling perceptions of the United States as both protector and persecutor.

"There may be many people who don't like the pre-eminence of America," said David Dreier, a Republican congressman from California, another participant. "But they do like Americans to be there" in times of crisis.

"The U.S. is essentially a provider of most of the building blocks of international peace and security," said Richard Haass, a State Department official. Or, as Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, added: "Nobody likes the big guy on the block. We are every country's problem and every country's solution."

As the United States prepares for possible war with Iraq, the challenge facing Mr. Ashcroft and other American officials is to counter the argument from critics in Europe and the Arab and Muslim world that the twin wars on terror and Iraq will create so much resentment that it will breed a new generation of anti-American terrorists.

While Mr. Ashcroft said that the American aim was to prevent acts of terror before they took place rather than prosecute the perpetrators afterward, Mahathir bin Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, turned to the attorney general across a stage and, in front of hundreds of participants, said, "To say you must do preventive actions irrespective of the causes is wrong."

The terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center "did it because they were incensed with something and we have to find out why they were incensed," Mr. Mahathir said. "We should try not to amplify the situation, anger them more and lead more people to join this group of people."

Mr. Ashcroft replied, "I am not prepared to say we have to give up values to appease the terrorist."

Critics from the United States, Europe and the Muslim world specifically challenged many of the Bush administration's antiterrorism measures, including its detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, its refusal to identify by name people detained in the United States and its decision to register foreigners from selected, mostly Muslim, nations.

It is, however, the looming possibility of war with Iraq that underpins a sense among some critics that Washington's overwhelming dominance as the world's only superpower has somehow lessened its standing in the world. "We expect more wise guy than big guy," said Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League.