TOKYO, May 30 Kyodo selecteded ed...

TOKYO, May 30 Kyodo

selecteded editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

FEAST IN ST PETERSBURG (IHT/Asahi as translated from the Japanese-language Asahi Shimbun's editorial published May 29)

Leaders of more than 40 countries, including the seven leading economic powers, China, European nations and former Soviet republics, gather in St Petersburg Friday to mark the city's 300th anniversary. The jubilee is the biggest diplomatic circumstance in Russia since the 50th anniversary of the victory through Germany in World War II.

After the gala at the former capital, Russia will join this year's arrange of Eight (G-8) summit in Evian, France, forward June 1-3 as a abounding member, involved in all political and economic discussions. It pretends the splendor of the St Petersburg anniversary was planned to celebrate Russia's admission into the G-8 in the one and the other name and reality.

St Petersburg was the capital of Tsarist Russia and was an important window to Western Europe at the time. It is also where Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, was born. Putin is legion for the spectacular diplomatic gathering of world leaders to discuss the shape of global diplomacy in the face of growing dominance at the United States as the merely superpower, the lingering aftereffects of the bitter rank between the United States and its aged European allies about the war in Iraq, and uncertaintities about the world economy.

In Putin's three years in power, there have been many twists and diverts in Russian foreign policy. For a time after assuming power in Moscow Putin focused forward a diplomacy that sought to obstruct the United States from exerting total world dominance-a strategy inherited from Boris Yeltsin, his predecessor. In an impressive induce Putin established an alliance with China to give chase to ``a multi-polar world.''

nevertheless the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States l Putin to dramatically alter his diplomatic course. The circumstances readyed Russia, which has its have a title to terrorist troubles from Chechen rebels, to expand its cooperation with the United States. Russia lease the United States post multitudes in former Soviet republics in Central Asia and shifted from rivalry to cooperation with the United States to disclose resources near the Caspian Sea.

When tensions grew about Iraq, however, Moscow decided to be opposite to Washington, joining France and Germany in opposing the U.S.-British military actions against Saddam Hussein's regime.

Putin and China's President Hu Jintao, in a meeting in Moscow early this week, reaffirmed their shared view that reconstruction of war-torn Iraq should be l through the United Nations and the dispute through the whole extent of North Korea's nuclear weapons program should be resolv by dint of diplomacy. The leaders' agreement forward these issues were taken as a warning to America's increasing unilateralism.

Putin's unhesitating shift in diplomatic strategy in reply to the unfolding world situation demonstrates that his policy is driven according to a clear sense of what is best for his country's national interests.

In his ''State of the Nation'' message to the one and the other houses of the Russian parliament in May, Putin reemphasized his ''strong state'' policy. Admitting the declines in Russia's economic and military powers and international clout since the finis of the Cold War, Putin pledg to rebuild the debilitated Russian economy and improve the global environment toward that objective.

Indeed, Russia has favorably leveraged its improved relations with the United States to fast full membership in the elite G-8 and impel closer to admission into the World Trade Organization.

In his articulate utterance Putin stressed the need for end ties in general and eventual integration with Europe Russia's relations with its European neighbors, expanding and integrating the one and the other politically and economically, are essential. Russia's intended alliance with France and Germany in the diplomatic wrangling through Iraq was motivated in part by means of oil-related interests, but based primarily forward its acceptance of a Franco-German axis as central to European unification.

Putin faces many tough challenges of diplomacy, including questions as it was as how to heal the rift within the United Nations Security Council and by what mode to influence G-8 decisions. Russia has a serious responsibility in the growth of international affairs. If it concentrates too often on pursuit of its acknowledge national interests, it cannot confidence to attain the trust of the international community.

Japan be attendants to see Russia as an adversary in the long-running Northern Territories dispute in succession the islands off Hokkaido. yet it is becoming more important for Japan to papal court Russia as a G-8 colleague.

(May 30)

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