A rchive Date
[ 07-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
|
[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/03/07/38249-ap.html
Bush remarks increase worries across Asia
By ROBERT BARR
Fri, March 7, 2003
LONDON (AP) - U.S. President George W. Bush's new warning that he is prepared to go to war soon in Iraq without U.N. backing spread gloom Friday among opponents of military action and heightened anticipation among the troops waiting for orders.
Gen. Mike Jackson, the British chief of staff who was visiting his forces in Kuwait, said his troops would reach a peak of readiness in four or five days. "But even if it were today, it's good to go," Jackson said.
The chief U.N. weapons inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei, have said they will report to the Security Council on Friday that Saddam Hussein is cooperating better, but still isn't doing enough to comply with U.N. demands.
The United States, Britain and Spain are trying to round up votes for a new Security Council resolution which would effectively authorize an attack on Iraq. France, Russia and China - which each have a veto on the Security Council - are opposed to the resolution.
But Bush, in a news conference Thursday, said that "when it comes to our security, if we need to act, we will act. And we really don't need United Nations approval to do so."
Turkey's military sent hundreds of trucks carrying tanks, ambulances and jeeps toward the Iraqi border Friday, apparently anticipating U.S. military action. Tensions have been rising between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds who live in an autonomous zone across the border.
Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said France has "saved the honor of Europe" by opposing immediate military action.
"What seems to me to be most urgent now is to find ways and means to reforge a bit more suitable trans-Atlantic relations," Michel said, adding that Europe "cannot always be a follower .... This abscess had to be pierced."
Pierre Lellouche, unofficial leader of the "Atlanticist" block in the French parliament, said the international community appeared doomed to fracture.
"We are now headed for a clash, and it's going to be the worst possible war, which is a war outside the U.N. by one, two or three powers with the rest of democracies being divided," Lellouche said Friday in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. television.
"We will face, obviously, demonstrations in the streets, probably a lot of resentment, probably terrorist attack - and everybody will blame each other."
Prices fell in most of Asia's stock markets after nervous investors watched the Bush news conference live on television. The prime-time event in the United States occurred as Japanese trading was getting under way on Friday morning Asia time.
"With indications that war might even be declared next week ... the market is facing downside pressure," said Norihito Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi Securities.
"It looked like he was telling us, finally, that this is about defending America against something, a threat that suddenly showed up, and we were all going through the motions at the U.N. just for him," said Monika Jenssen, 43, a college administrator in Oslo, Norway.
In Sidon, Lebanon, Sheik Maher Hammoud said Bush was ignoring world opinion, the Vatican and the "woes and tragedies" of two world wars.
"The logic of things say that U.S. President George W. Bush will pay dearly for his madness, intransigence and insistence on waging war against Iraq and standing in the face of world peoples, ignoring the cries of the aggrieved and protests of millions of people," Hammoud said in a sermon at the Al-Quds Mosque.
In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov said Russia would be strongly critical of a U.S. attack without U.N. backing, but said the two countries needed to focus on keeping their relations strong in any case.
"It wouldn't be the first disagreement that we had," Mamedov said, pointing at Russia's strong criticism of the U.S. and British air strikes on Iraq in 1998 and the NATO air campaign against Slobodan Milosevic's government in Yugoslavia.
"The emphasis shouldn't be put on how we will criticize each other if we fail to reach agreement, but on what we should do today to preserve the general movement toward partnership and the integrity of the anti-terror coalition ... while differing in our assessment of certain issues," Mamedov said.
Ismail Kadare, Albania's most famous living writer, said in an interview published Friday in Tirana that his countrymen broadly favor intervention in Iraq "because we remember Kosovo," where NATO forces intervened to protect ethnic Albanians.
"Albanians expected NATO to intervene militarily against the Milosevic regime, which was similar to Saddam Hussein's regime today," Kadare told the daily newspaper Shekulli.
Many Asian nations have allied themselves with the United States in the war on terrorism but are unhappy with what some see as likely action by Washington against Iraq - without support from the U.N. Security Council.
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda reiterated his government's view that a military strike against Iraq was unnecessary.
"We reject that," Wirayuda said. "Indonesia's position as a member of the nonaligned movement and the Organization of the Islamic Conference is that we are against war in Iraq."
A spokeswoman for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Tokyo supports the Security Council's efforts to reach a peaceful resolution. The Japanese government is continuing to "watch developments in the situation carefully," said the spokeswoman, Misako Kaji.
A Thai lawmaker warned a war would create a "great likelihood of terrorist retaliation," but said he would side with Washington if it decides to act against Iraq.
"There really is no other viable option," said Kobsak Chutikul, the deputy leader in one of the parties in Thailand's coalition government. "For all its flaws, I would feel safer to have my children grow up in a world dominated by the United States than by any other country."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|