World leaders condemn U.S. strikes
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks in Moscow's Kremlin on Thursday when he described the U.S.-led attack on Iraq as "big political mistake."
Governments stance similar to that held during entire debate
MSNBC NEWS SERVICES
March 20 — Countries around the world voiced condemnation and regret on Thursday at the first U.S.-led strikes against Iraq. With the exception of Britain, America’s counterparts on the U.N. Security Council denounced the attack, and in Muslim nations protesters took to the streets to express solidarity with the Iraqi people.
March 20 — United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urges that all attempts be made to shield the Iraqi civillian population from the horrors of war.
RUSSIA AND CHINA criticized the U.S. strikes, while France and Germany lamented them and warned of the potential for catastrophe.
In some of the harshest words by a world leader so far, Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded a quick end to the attack, calling it a “big political mistake.”
“This military action is unjustified,” a grim Putin told Russia’s top ministers in the Kremlin, adding that it flouted world opinion and international law.
Putin’s comments were notable for their absence of diplomatic niceties toward President Bush, whom he has routinely described as a friend, or any words of sympathy for the Washington case against Iraq.
The Russian leader, desperately looking for a way to boost the sagging Russian economy, has been dragging his country into the arms of the West, and the United States in particular.
“Iraq has presented no danger, neither for neighboring countries nor for any region in the world,” Putin said, in a contradiction of Washington’s view.
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GERMANY, FRANCE EXPRESS REGRETGermany expressed
“great concern and consternation” that its antiwar diplomacy with France and Russia had failed, but it immediately turned attention to the aftermath of war and offered help dealing with the humanitarian consequences.
Is U.S. war against Iraq illegal? “France wants to repeat its conviction that war is not the solution,” French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said shortly before he was due to head to Brussels for a European Union summit. “It will worsen the situation in an already fragile region.”
France, Germany and Russia lined up in recent weeks to oppose war in Iraq and threaten to veto any U.N. resolution that automatically authorized the use of force.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on both sides to do everything possible to protect civilians during the fighting.
“My thoughts today are with the Iraqi people, who face yet another ordeal,” he said on Thursday.”I hope that all parties will scrupulously observe the requirements of international humanitarian law.” Annan said.
In sharp contrast, the governments of Britain and Japan, staunch U.S. allies, expressed immediate solidarity with the United States.
Iraq “has not acted sincerely,” said Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Leaders in Italy, Denmark, Poland and Albania also said they supported the United States.
“The war in Iraq is a reality that we expected,” said Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a U.S. ally. “The Philippines is part of the coalition of the willing.”
Latest on the military moves
PROTESTING U.S. ACTION
In Muslim nations, outrage brewed. In Pakistan, already brimming with anger against America, one religious-political coalition called the attack “barbaric,” and others demanded immediate intervention.
“It is open tyranny,” said Mohammed Asghar, his hand trembling with anger as he prepared tea in his ramshackle stall. “Every Pakistani Muslim should go to help the Iraqi people.”
Protesters in Egypt and Syria took to the streets Thursday to show their anger at the start of the war and demanded the expulsion of the U.S. ambassadors in both Arab countries.
Riot police used water cannons and batons to push back rock-throwing Egyptian protesters near the U.S. embassy in Cairo and in the city’s center, hundreds of people called for the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador.
“Empty Bush’s embassy, and throw out the ambassador,” they chanted. “Americans and Israelis are one enemy.”
CALLS TO SHUT U.S. EMBASSIES
In Damascus, protesters, waving Iraqi flags and pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, called President Bush a “war criminal” and condemned Arab states allied with Washington as traitors and “slaves to America and its dollar.”
They demanded that Syria expel the U.S. ambassador and close down the mission, which had been temporarily shut to the public to “assess the security situation.”
The legislature in Jammu-Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state, adjourned Thursday in protest. “This is a war of self interest launched by the sole superpower,” said the state’s law and parliamentary affairs minister, Muzaffar Beig.
In Palestinian areas, a group of 700, mostly schoolchildren, waved Iraqi flags and posters of Saddam Hussein and burned American flags. Demonstrators in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun shouted: “We will sacrifice our soul and our blood for Saddam.”
In Afghanistan, so recently the subject of American military action, street talk ran squarely against Washington. “Today is a dark day for Muslims,” said Sher Aga, 50, who teaches aviation at Kabul’s Air Force Academy. “The United Nations is nothing anymore.”
SECURITY TIGHTENED
Security was tightened around the world, especially in embassy districts.
In Beijing, paramilitary officers checked the IDs of Chinese passing the Iraqi Embassy, and already-stringent procedures outside the American Embassy were tightened. In the Pakistani capital, soldiers with assault rifles hunkered down in sandbag bunkers outside embassies.
In Manila, where anti-war protesters clanged pots near the U.S. Embassy, Arroyo said the military and police were on a high state of alert and urged local communities to prevent “terrorist incursions.”
Far from the chaos, in the sun-drenched islands of the Caribbean, leaders worried war would keep tourists away and crush economies. But on a white-sand beach in Barbados, Guthier Gilbert, 50, of Montreal wasn’t concerned.
“If they declare war,” he said, “I don’t think it will affect my vacation.”
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