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China renews appeal

By P. S. Suryanarayana

BEIJING March 21. China has renewed its appeal to the U.S. to halt its ongoing military attack on Iraq at precisely the moment of a decisive escalation. Beijing conveyed its second appeal in as many days when the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, telephoned China's new State Councillor, Tang Jiaxuan, to congratulate him on his elevation from the post of Foreign Minister and to discuss Iraq.

Mr. Powell's call came after China shifted its diplomatic gear and asked the U.S. to abandon the war even as open hostilities had just begun. Until the U.S. launched the military strike on Iraq on Thursday, China refrained from threatening to exercise its veto power in the U.N. Security Council as regards an explicit war-mandate that Washington was thinking of seeking from the Council. Mr. Tang told Mr. Powell that China was seriously concerned about the new U.S.-led war against Iraq on account of the likelihood of a humanitarian disaster in addition to a major wave of regional political and strategic turbulence.

China, therefore, wanted the U.S. to retrace its steps and "return to the right path of seeking a political solution''. In a separate development, China's National People's Congress (NPC), or Parliament, today expressed its "grave worries''. The U.S. should "comply with the will of the international community'' and call off the ongoing military campaign, the NPC's Foreign Affairs Committee said. On Beijing's soft line towards the U.S. until it declared war, authoritative Chinese sources told The Hindu that China's first priority was to look at the overall complexity of the current Iraqi crisis. As the sources noted, China did not reveal its mind categorically until it became necessary to speak and be counted.

Echoing the views of the ruling Communist Party of China, the People's Daily today underlined that the current U.S. military operations against Iraq lacked both a legal sanction and the moral justification.

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