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Thursday, October 28, 2004
International Support?
The Russian leader said during a trip to Tajikistan that attacks on coalition forces in Iraq were aimed at defeating Bush. "If they achieve that goal, then that will give international terrorism a new impulse and extra power," he said.
Putin opposed the invasion of Iraq. But the statement equating a Bush defeat with a victory by terrorists was a clear indication of support, although he has refused to say explicitly which candidate he likes better.
Others who have weighed in include Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has sent troops to Iraq in a humanitarian role. "I'm close to Bush so I'd like him to do well," he said.
Another Asian heavyweight, Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, seemed to lean Bush's way by saying that what "Asia needs is president who can withstand the pressures of protectionism, pressures against outsourcing, (and) is able to keep free trade going."
"We haven't seen anything good from Democrats," said Hasan Rowhani, head of Iran's top security decision-making body, the Supreme National Security Council.
Cuban parliament speaker Ricardo Alarcon had little optimism about Kerry either: "Given what he's said already, it seems like with him it would be more of the same."
Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski took a poke at Kerry for supposedly slighting Poland's contribution of troops in Iraq during the Democrat's first debate with Bush.
"The fact that a senator with 20 years' experience does not appreciate the Polish sacrifice is painful," Kwasniewski said. But the remark could be seen more as sticking up for Poland than as any kind of endorsement.
10/28/2004 09:09:00 AM by Todd Bacon
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