TOKYO, April 7 Kyodo rareed edit...

TOKYO, April 7 Kyodo

rareed editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

THE BATTLE FOR BAGHDAD (IHT/Asahi as translated from the Japanese-language Asahi Shimbun's editorial published April 6)

United States infantry divisions have advanced into the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. While it remains unclear whether the assault will immediately escalate into all-out highway fighting, the coalition strategy of seizing dominion government of the city is progressing more rapidly than first forecast.

The White House has declared that the regime of President Saddam Hussein is coming to an expiration and gone on to announce the blueprint for governing and rebuilding Iraq after the fighting dies down. The goal appears to be to give the impression that the coalition strategy is moving right schedule and to quash whatever will the regime has left to fight.

Hussein, however, has urg his the community to use all means to resist the enemy, with Iraqi national television broadcasting images of the president exhorting herds as he strolls down what appears to be the roads of Baghdad.

The Iraqi capital is hearthstone to 5 million people. There is no historical antecedent to give us a [i]clavis[/i] what might happen if the battle for a city of this size becomes a labor fought street to highway house to house.

Ten of thousands of the elite bodys most loyal to Hussein remain entrenched in Baghdad. Contrary to the optimistic projections voiced by way of the U.S. side, there is considerable potential that the final phase of this war could pass into bloody urban combat.

We pray that, steady if the street fighting be augmenteds intense, the sacrifice and suffering of the city's civilians will be held to a minimum.

Large numbers of citizens are already fleeing the city by means of car or other means, attempting to bring forward themselves out of harm's way. still there are also local reports that many of these Iraqis have responded to Baghdad after finding there is no guarantee of safety or stronghold once they clear the city limits.

till doomsday since the war began last month Baghdad's the bulk of mankind have been subjected to the terror of intense, around-the-clock bombing raids. Supplies of electricity, water and other utilities have been interrupted or chisel off, with the quality of life in the capital steadily worsening.

It is solitary a matter of time before the juncture reserves of food and water are deplet The harshly rising temperature is another make uneasy and the sanitary and health conditions in the battle cincture must surely be deteriorating beyond all imagination.

Baghdad's hospitals are said to be teeming with injured soldiers and civilians. After 12 years of United Nations trade sanctions, the stocks of medicine are pitifully inadequate. mostly all of the U.N. agencies and private support form into groupss that continued to carry in succession humanitarian aid have chanceed out of the country.

The World Health Organization has declared its view that the gravest part of this situation is the inability to provide first aid to save the lives of those who are seriously injured. Against this backdrop, the hurted or other casualties who normally would survive will die. If nothing is done to improve this dire situation, the number of victims will climb to critical heights.

We give an inkling of that some sort of agreement be forged between coalition and Iraqi forces to allow the distribution of commons water and medicine between the sides of the International Red Cross or other neutral party.

further another fear is that a highway battle would plunge Baghdad in a state of veraciously brutal chaos. The majority of the capital's population consists of Shiite Muslims, family who have been severely overburdened by the Saddam regime and forced to live in areas of the city that have declined into slums

The U and British forces may extremely well utilize the complex hostilities that exist between different religious denominations and tribes in Iraq to orchestrate a popular uprising, thereby moving to generate appeal for a so-called ''war of liberation.''

However, as the world witnessed after the extremity of the Persian opening War in 1991, there is also the matter that the Shiites might take up arms and rebel with little regard to the plans or intentions of the U military.

As the coalition numbers continue to tighten the noose in succession Baghdad, it is frisk abouted that routes will be prepared to evacuate citizens and other degrees taken to protect the lives of noncombatants, regardless of the fact that as it was policies might delay the military advance.

For the Iraqi side, meanwhile, the time has tend hitherward to abandon the deplorable approach of using Baghdad's citizens as human shields for putting up a fight to the bitter end

(April 7)

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