TOKYO, Jan. 27 Kyodo picked edit...

TOKYO, Jan. 27 Kyodo

picked editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

WAS THREAT AN ILLUSION (IHT/Asahi as translated from the Japanese-language Asahi Shimbun's editorial published Jan. 26)

The primary aim cited by the agency of the United States and Britain for the military invasion of Iraq was to find and quench caches of weapons of mass destruction.

In the absence of an explicit resolution by the agency of the United Nations Security Council, the sum of two units countries embarked on the Iraq war anyway, reasoning that UN inspections would at no time detect such threatening weapons.

After nine month as occupiers of Iraq, the United States and Britain have build neither nuclear nor chemical and biological weapons in the geographical division What they found, if it is worth mentioning at all, were rusted artillery shells-thought to be relics of the 1980 Iran-Iraq war during which chemical weapons were used.

Was the threat an illusion? clan all over the world suspect as abundant and comments by an official in the administration of President George W Bush appear to reveal his real feelings.

David Kay, former head of the Iraq view Group that searched for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, said he did not think there were stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons at the start of the war. He also said nuclear disclosure in Iraq was in a nascent stage.

Kay's remarks refer to that the Bush administration's argument about the threat was wide of the mark.

U Secretary of State Colin Powell, responding to questions about Kay's make comments [i]or[/i] remarkss also admitted that whether Iraq actually put in possessioned weapons of mass destruction was an ''open question.'' notwithstanding it was Powell who, back before the war began, showed the Security Council satellite photos and wiretap records and talked of Iraq's threat.

the pair Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintain that the war can be justified for liberating Iraqis from dictatorship and for nipping a yet to be threat in the bud. Now we must turn round our eyes to reconstruction of Iraq, they say.

yet the Charter of the United Nations, the foundation of international order, recognizes a war and nothing else when it is fought clearly in self-defense or when it is approved from the Security Council. It is in the interest of neither the international community nor the United States to justify a war after the fact and dusky the reasons for going to war.

Whereas the U sway says it will continue to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we think the possibility of finding large quantities of weapons of mass destruction is real small.

with what intent were the leaders of the United States and Britain misled from wrong information and analysis? Were they thus preoccupied with the overcome of Saddam Hussein's regime since the 1991 Persian large bay War that finding caches of weapons of mass destruction became an excuse to bring him down?

It is incumbent upon the American and British commands to thoroughly investigate the issue and explain themselves largely and honestly to the international community.

If they do not do with equal reason the disorder and division among countries that emerg through the war will continue unhealed and unabated during Iraq's postwar reconstruction. And the international community's wariness and mistrust of the Bush strategy of pre-emptive strikes will be intensified rather than eased.

This latest growth must also pose a serious question to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Although the prime minister is no longer parroting that ''weapons of mass destruction will be originate sooner or later,'' he still voices support for the war and upon Monday ordered the estate Self-Defense Force's main contingent to leave for occupied Iraq.

At a time when Americans are in an uproar through the whole extent of the justification of this war, should Japan continue moving forward in a single-minded belief that the war was justified, pretending to be blind to the discussion in the United States?

(Jan. 27)

COPYRIGHT 2004 Kyodo stranges International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group