November 3, 2004
By ROHAN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer
Washington Times
Photo: A montage of French newspapers frontpages on the U.S. elections, in Paris Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004. Headlines read, from top roght clockwise: America voted en masse; Neck and neck; America, what will you do with our dreams?; the longest night. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- President Bush's allies in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cautiously welcomed signs Wednesday that he could be re-elected in America's tight presidential race. But on the streets outside the United States, many people were disappointed.
Most foreign governments took care not to make comments that could be interpreted as favoring one candidate over another as vote counting continued to show Bush in a tight race with Democratic challenger John Kerry.
Shares in Asia rallied, through traders said the rises were due more to investors' relief that the drawn out campaign had come to an end than the news of a possible winner. Oil prices reversed a weeklong decline to surge above $51 a barrel.
Australia's conservative government, one of Bush's staunchest allies and among the first to join the U.S.-led military coalition in the war on terror, said Bush's re-election looked "more likely than not" and that Kerry would need a miracle to win.
"From our point of view, the Bush administration is a known quantity," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. "We've had a very good relationship with them for the last four years and I'm sure we'll be able to keep building on that over the next four."
"But frankly if Sen. Kerry somehow miraculously comes through here, or if in any case he had been elected, we would have worked pretty well with them as well," Downer said.
Another U.S. ally in Iraq, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, said that no matter who becomes the next president, Japan's ties with the United States will stay close.
"Whoever gets elected, Japan-U.S. ties and the alliance will not change," Koizumi, who has a close personal relationship with Bush, told reporters.
In Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said his country would have good relations with whoever wins, but that talks on a free trade agreement between the countries would "move forward quicker" if there was a Republican administration.
"People worry about security because if the Republicans win, war and terrorism will escalate," Thaksin told reporters. "I think Bush is aware of such a scenario and things will move in a better direction after the election."
Analysts said that security issues were one of the keys to the election, the first since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States.
"Despite a bad economy and the loss of jobs, the Americans are still gripped by the 9/11 scenario that has played in favor of Bush," said Amen Izzadeen, an analyst with the independent Daily Mirror newspaper in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Bush's response to the attacks - launching a global war on terrorism that led to invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq - brought U.S. policy to all corners of the globe in a way it hasn't for decades.
"This is a catastrophe for the rest of the world," said Syafii Maarif, chairman of Muhammadiyah, a mainstream Muslim group in Indonesia, the world's most populous Islamic country. "We have already seen that Bush has made a mess of the world over the last four years."
In Europe, governments said that the election was a chance to repair ties strained by Bush's decision to go to war despite opposition from European powers such as France and Germany.
"I hope that a re-elected President Bush would use the chance offered by his re-election for a new beginning in European-American and German-American relations," German Foreign Ministry official Karsten Voigt told ARD television.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said: "We have lots to do on current crises: Iraq, the Middle East, Iran, the challenges of the African continent, to rebuild, to renovate trans-Atlantic relations."
Observers credited Bush's success to Americans' fears of more terrorist attacks and signs the economy may be improving - but noted it was a very close race.
"It is an incumbent president in a situation where a great part of the nation experiences that it is in a war with terrorism and the economy is moving in the right direction," said Sweden's Prime Minister Goeran Persson. "These two issues together should have given Bush a clear victory. Despite this, it was very narrow. This shows that the U.S. is divided."
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