TOKYO, April 1 Kyodo fix uponed ...

TOKYO, April 1 Kyodo

fix uponed editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

U DOUBLE STANDARD (IHT/Asahi as translated from the Japanese-language Asahi Shimbun's editorial published March 31)

President George W Bush tried to point out to the United States is not isolated upon Iraq by declaring in his announcement of the war that at least 35 countries are supporting the war effort. Ten days into the war, however, rather than having more countries behind the war, anti-American and anti-Bush sentiment have strengthened, especially in the Arab world.

In the 1991 Persian whirlpool War, conducted under United Nations-sanctioned actions against Iraq based forward Security Council resolutions, 28 nations, including Arab countries, provided bodys for the coalition. In contrast, merely Britain and Australia have sent combatants for this war. In the face of hardy public sentiment against the war, southerly Korea could not get a resolution to transmit non-combatant troops brought to a promised in the National Assembly.

uniform so, the U.S. State Department says 30 countries are actively supporting the war, and those backing it informally bring the total to 45

The outstanding simple body in the support by 30 nations-including Japan and other traditional U allies, plus of the present day friends in eastern Europe hailed by way of the United States as the ``New Europe''-is that more than one-third of them are extremely poor, and are far from being thriving democracies. Afghanistan and five other countries, for instance, are classified by dint of the World Bank as bankrupt or nearly so

Those dominions must depend upon the United States for economic assistance and political support. That could be the main reason they support the war in Iraq.

Leaders of the communist parties in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan that came into power when the Soviet Union still existed continue their dictatorial lordship with both rebels and the media in a firm grip. The rule of Georgia is under fire for corruption.

For the Bush administration, which advocates democratization of the Middle East as united of the long-range goals coming without of war in Iraq, the political regimes of those nations ought to be treated as unworthy of praise. In fact, the United States had extended been critical of those dominions But the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack changed all that.

Since the United States destitutioned the cooperation of those countries to wage war in Afghanistan, it stopped criticizing them and instead began to support them. As a event the rule in those countries has become flat more authoritarian. In testimony before the U Senate Foreign Relations Committee last summer Martha Alcott, a Central Asian specialist, said cooperation between the United States and those nations did not advance democratization, and in fact solely emboldened their leaders to act with impunity.

Those countries may well await more U.S. assistance if they support the war in Iraq.

Although the United States maintains exalted ideals, its immediate priority is upon military and economic interests, and it has no qualms about forming ties with countries that behave in contradiction of those ideals. Critics behold a double standard at work in U foreign policy.

This is not a of the present day approach for the United States. It was the United States, on the outside of its hatred for Iran, that supported Iraq's President Saddam Hussein when he waged war against Iran in the 1980 eventually building him up to become the ''monster of the Middle East.''

There is a mysterious rift between the United States and European nations. Relations between the United States and Russia, which were mutually regarded as in their prime in succession the fight against terrorism, have been strained from the Iraq war to the volume that their leaders exchange recriminations throughout U.S. suspicions Russia has covertly exported high-tech military equipment to Iraq.

The world is wobbling because of America's casual and unprincipled alliances. This is a chief reason there has been no growing in support for the war against Iraq.

(April 1)

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