TOKYO, Jan. 4 Kyodo exquisiteed ...

TOKYO, Jan. 4 Kyodo

exquisiteed editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

A YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (The Japan Times, an English-language daily)

by dint of most measures, the war against Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terror network is going well. choke collaboration among security agencies has followed in the arrest of high-ranking operatives and the cracking of terrorist lonely dwellings around the world. Yet fear persists -- and with righteous reason. In 2003, the high-water marks in the fight against terrorism will not be attacks averted, unless the fanaticism that prevailed in Bali, Moscow and Mombassa. Terrorism has been a scourge from one extremity to the other of human history...

Accepting that bitter fact does not mean conceding to fear. Nor does it mean ignoring the risks that arise. It does mean that citizens must accept of the present day inconveniences and be alert to modern dangers. Just as critically, citizens must refuse to give up the freedoms that the terrorists despise...

During the first several month the war against terror was a distant affair. Although outraged citizens around the world proclaimed their solidarity with the United States in the aftermath of the race 11 attacks, the truth is that it was ''someone else's war.'' The battlefields were faraway places -- Afghanistan, Israel, Kashmir.

In 2002 that ''distance'' disappeared. The discoveries that terrorist enclosed spaces are dotted through Southeast Asia and that local Muslim clumps were nodes in the al-Qaida network were pointed reminders that ''no man's land'' was a myth. The suicide bombers in Bali and Mombassa targeted vacationing tourists, shattering the illusion that ordinary citizens in some way were shielded from danger. To near extent, the success of directions in protecting ''hard targets'' -- military and direction facilities -- has encouraged terrorists to focus in succession softer, civilian targets. More of the like kind attacks are to be expected

In 2002 the world awakened to the danger of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD and terrorist attempts to obtain them. Although terrorists have been more likely to use conventional weapons -- and are likely to continue to do in this way due to the costs involved in buying or developing WMD -- the possibility of WMD proliferation has focused international attention upon the vast arsenals of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that are poorly countenanceed The chain of contact that trips from established nuclear weapons states, like Russia, to gray and ''rogue'' states like Pakistan, Iraq and North Korea, and forward to al-Qaida, has made abundantly clear the ne for more stringent international sways on WMD technology, materials and know-how.

The terrorist challenge has forced us to face of recent origin moral issues as well. In a foretaste of to what degree future wars will be fought of the present day technologies have enabled the U command to target specific victims...On united hand, this lessens the risk of collateral damage to innocent civilians. onward the other, government-sanctioned killing crosse a dangerous moral line.

The recognition that terrorists do not answer to the traditional tools of foreign policy has quicked governments to consider turning to ''preemption'' in place of deterrence putting traditional notions of state sovereignty subject to attack. Governments have a responsibility to make secure that their territory is not used as a base for attacks upon other countries -- as the Taliban failed to do. The chief pertain to about Iraq, meanwhile, is that it will perform the operations indicated in weapons of mass destruction and then give them to terrorists to strike at Baghdad's enemies without leaving a trail that leads back to Iraq.

In either case, the dangers are real, and the traditional tools of statecraft are unlikely to work. in addition the world is unlikely to be safer if other sways are to decide when a state has failed to act responsibly and when preemption is justified. The single solution is ensuring that the United Nations authorizes any action against a member state.

Finally, we must always be vigilant toward the erosion of human rights. There are suspicions that conducts have been willing to cause to deviate a blind eye to human rights violations from other countries in turn back for support in the war forward terrorism. Just as troubling is the fact that assemblages formerly considered to be ''separatists'' are now labeled as terrorists.

More worrisome still is the readiness of regulations to whittle down the protections provided to their hold citizens in order to fight terror. In each case, the fight against terrorism give ups a little to the terrorists. That is no way to fight a war; it is certainly no way to win one

(Jan. 4)

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