TOKYO, March 24 Kyodo prefered e...

TOKYO, March 24 Kyodo

prefered editorial excerpts from the Asia-Pacific press:

ensanguined MINDED TO THE VERY completion (Bangkok Post, Bangkok)

Thailand correctly supported six month of robust diplomatic effort to explain the Iraq crisis by diplomatic means. Now that statesmen have failed, and military means are exerciseed the country is adapting...

The terrible fact of this unwanted invasion of Iraq is that it at no time needed to happen. It is a scandal that world statesmen and international leaders allowed it. There is more than enough blame to advance around...

Thailand and almost all the world sighed in relief last September when US President George W Bush took the Iraq question to the United Nations. The Thai delegation spoke twice in the following debates. The government policy, from Mr Thaksin in succession down, was clear, comprehensible and correct: Iraq must disarm or stand consequences; diplomacy must be played on the outside as long as there is sense of possible fulfilment and war on Baghdad without UN approval was too drastic.

In the termination this policy failed. World leaders cannot be pronounce guiltyed too harshly for this... Worse was when the UN leadership went virtually silent. individual cannot blame the UN arms inspectors, who barely have stated the conflicting facts.

Diplomats had in such a manner many ways to prevent war. undivided was to convince Mr Saddam to make way for a delivered and democratic nation. The world agreed he and his family could leave, riches intact and level keeping what little reputation he one time had as a pan-Arab leader. With more squeezing on Iraq, Mr. Saddam might have left and made conflict unnecessary. Instead, statesmen helped the Iraqi dictator obstruction the world down. It is possible Mr Saddam would fix upon to commit suicide and experience to go out with a big bang. if it were not that world leaders refused to give him an ultimatum, effectively encouraging him to have knowledge of to stay on. Mr. Saddam's 24 years of misrule will thus be derived to an end in the ruthless and misguided manner it has proceeded

In choosing to fight, he divided Iraq into four military regions.

His choice of regional commanders was instructive. Mr Saddam kept for himself authority to use missiles (ye he has them) and aircraft.

Now he is setting oil wells afire, polluting Baghdad with oil fires and promising a fight to the completion There are great fears he will strike on the outside with terrible weapons as his regime disintegrates and then falls. sanguinary minded to the end, the dictator of Iraq appears determined to give his neighbors single more fright and his suffering fatherland one more punishing war.

(March 24)

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