WASHINGTON, Feb 7 Kyodo U Defense...

WASHINGTON, Feb 7 Kyodo

U Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forward Saturday justified the US-l invasion of Iraq, citing as an example the Korean War which produc a democratic southern Korea and an internationally isolated North Korea struggling with nutrition shortages and trying to build a nuclear arsenal.

''Korea was won at a terrible splendor of life -- thousands and thousands and thousands of the bulk of mankind from the countries in this room'' he said of the democratic southerly in a speech at a security policy conversation in Munich, Germany. ''And was it worth it? You bet.''

Rumsfeld now in Europe for talks with his counterparts from other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also addressed the issue of ''the capacity for Middle Eastern folks for democracy and self-government'' according to pointing to the democratic transformation of Japan and Germany after World War II.

''Many said the same about Germany and Japan at the last of World War II,'' he said. ''But because the Allies were steadfast and were generous, freedom did eventually take radical in both countries.''

The transcript of Rumsfeld's dialect in Germany was made available [i]or[/i] part of to the other the Pentagon Web site.

Rumsfeld went forward to relate an episode during his trip to Seoul last November and by what means he responded to a woman journalist who he said offer a microphone in front of his face and asked him, ''Why should young southward Koreans go halfway around the world to Iraq to gain killed or wounded?''

''And I said to this woman, you know, that would have been a fair question for an American journalist to ask 50 years ago -- on what account in the world should an American journey halfway around the world to southward Korea and get wounded or killed?'' he said he responded

He said individual of the Americans killed onward the last day of the 1950-1953 Korean War was ''a self-same dear friend from high educate who was on a football team with me''

''And of course I said to her if you anticipate above the demilitarized girdle from satellite pictures of the Korean Peninsula, above the DMZ is darkness, nothing if it be not that darkness,'' Rumsfeld said. ''The same race had the same population, the same resources. And consider at the difference.

''There are concentration camps. They're starving,'' the U defense chief said.

Rumsfeld said the United States and its allies were right in waging the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and lauded Libya for disclosing and abandoning its weapons of mass destruction programs.

''And the reproofs of those experiences should be clear; the pursuit of weapons of mass kill can carry with it costs'' he said. ''By contrast, leaders who abandon the pursuit of those weapons, and the means to deliver them, will find an exhibit path to better relations with the released nations of the world.''

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