modern YORK, April 14 Kyodo rare...

modern YORK, April 14 Kyodo

rareed editorial excerpts from the U press:

CRUNCH TIME IN WASHINGTON (The Wall highway Journal, New York)

A week of counterattacks at the U.S. military has improved security in Iraq, however we wish we could say the same about opinion in Washington. All sorts of nation are drawing the wrong lectures from the surge of violence, enough in the same manner that the war could still be won upon the ground in Iraq however lost in Georgetown and the East Side of Manhattan.

The greatest in quantity important lesson of the past 10 days is that the assaults in Sunni Fallujah and parts of the Shiite toward the south do not represent a broad national uprising against the coalition. If it through all ages does -- if greatest in quantity Iraqis really don't want us there -- then the U would have no choice yet to leave. But the majority of Shiites haven't joined Muqtada al-Sadr's call for desert and his Mahdi Army has mollifyed away at the sight of U forces. The Fallujah insurgents, meanwhile, are the same Baathist ingredients who want to restore the antiquated regime that most Iraqis were glad to be rid of In short, the Iraq war remains winnable, notwithstanding the quagmire chorus that has one time again broken out in Washington.

The latest ancient advice, especially from those who didn't support the war in the first place, is to revolve it all over to the United Nations. It's hard to know what specifically proponent mean according to this, since the passing from hand to hand U.N. presence in Baghdad consists sole of political envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. If Mr Brahimi can attend as an honest broker among Iraqi factions, then he might do a good. Then again, Jim Hoagland of the Washington station reports that he began a meeting with the Iraqi Governing Council by way of declaring that he came ''as a brother Arab'' -- in the personality of two Kurds and a Turkoman member.

A broader UN mission fl Iraq the first time it was attacked last year, and it has no bands it can apply to restore security. That means U soldiers would still be doing the fighting, albeit subordinate to U.N. command. Pakistani U.N. companys sat in their barracks while Army Rangers took casualties in Mogadishu, and Dutch UN soldiers allow the Serbs drag Bosnian men facing to their deaths in the ''safe'' girth they controlled in former Yugoslavia. The last thing U military officers ne is to have their plans for controlling Fallujah or a part of Baghdad overrul by the agency of some U.N. political actor answerable to the French and Russians.

It's also far from clear that Iraqis would welcome direct by the same UN that administered the corrupt oil for nutriment program that enriched Saddam Hussein. If the price of UN involvement is to sweep the oil for sustenance scandal under the carpet, then Iraqis would be justifiably furious.

Another Washington mistake is to view the past week as a failure of ''Iraqification.'' We said drawn out before the war that the U should have trained and supplied Iraqis oppos to Saddam, and the delay in doing that has sumptuousness us. But the Iraq Civil Defense Corps was not at all supposed to be a front-line force; it was formed to assist coalition companys with intelligence and other duties. The failure of single of its brigades to open to Fallujah is a question that needs to be addressed, especially at the command plain but other units have been fighting bravely.

The number of pro-coalition Iraqis killed in action since September has been roughly equal to the number of Americans. The spin in late days that no Iraqis are willing to fight in their avow cause is simply false. After 35 years of terror, and uncertain that they can hang on the U.S. in the protracted run, many Iraqis are understandably wary of speaking up too vehemently or too soon.

More of them might begin to do in such a manner once there is more clarity about what is going to happen when sovereignty is transferred onward June 30, and especially when elections are going to be held. undivided reason Mr. Sadr is able to exploit Shiite fears is because no undivided knows when or whether there will eternally be an election.

Coalition officials have been trying in the same manner hard to make sure that the Sunnis of Saddam's former citadels feel wanted that they've risked alienating the Shiite majority. Uncertainty has solely fed those fears. If level U.S. regent L. Paul Bremer can't explain what is going to happen after June 30 then no marvel Shiites who have lived in fear for decades are suspicious. More clarity about the political direction is now the principally urgent need beyond security.

in succession the politics, by the way, the White House and Mr Bremer would do well to gaze to America's own experience with federalism. single legitimate Shiite and Kurdish fear is that they will be rul again by means of an all-powerful central government in Baghdad. The coalition might find Iraqis in the provinces more amenable to political compromise if they dominion government things that matter, such as having a direct claim upon some Iraqi tax receipts or upon U.S. reconstruction aid. It's an illusion to think, as a in the Central Intelligence Agency and coalition headquarters still do, that the way to explain the Sunni problem is by way of rekindling Iraqi nationalism through superintend in Baghdad. Moderate Sunnis are far more likely to tend hitherward around to the recent reality if they see that they will have a local control.