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03/17/2006:

"US backs first-strike attack plan"

The US will not shy away from attacking regimes it considers hostile, or groups it believes have nuclear or chemical weapons, the White House has confirmed.
In the first restatement of national security strategy since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US singles out Iran as the greatest single current danger.

The new policy backs the policy of pre-emptive war first issued in 2002, and criticised since the Iraq war.

But it stresses that the US aims to spread democracy through diplomacy.

The new strategy also highlights a string of other global issues of concern to the US, such as the spread of Aids, the threat of pandemic flu and the prospect of natural and environmental disasters.

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is due to make a speech launching the new strategy on Thursday.

Other key points include:

-Stressing US preference for "transformational diplomacy" and coalition building, but not necessarily within United Nations or Nato frameworks

-Criticising the lack of democratic freedoms in Russia and China

-Branding Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a "demagogue" aiming to destabilise the region

-Urging Palestinian radical group Hamas to recognise Israel, renounce violence and disarm.

The substance of the revised strategy focuses on the challenges facing the cUS in the wake of the Iraq war.

In a nod to previous high-level foreign policy statements, which singled out individual countries as potential enemies of the US, the new document highlights seven "despotic" states.

They are: North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma and Zimbabwe.

The policy of the US, according to the opening words of the 49-page document, is "to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world".
bbc.co.uk