PARIS -- Many Asian and European leaders backed NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia as vital to preventing further bloodshed in Kosovo.
But Russia, which has close cultural and historic ties to Yugoslavia, and China demanded an immediate end to the allied assault. Beijing considers the Kosovo conflict an internal affair.The airstrikes were launched Wednesday after diplomacy failed to end a year of fighting between Yugoslav forces and ethnic Albanians that has left more than 2,000 people dead in Kosovo.
Iraq, Vietnam, India and Indonesia also spoke out against the bombings.
The Philippines indicated Manila would not take sides, while Japan, Australia and New Zealand supported NATO.
China's state media accused Western powers of escalating the crisis by encouraging "terrorist" ethnic Albanian rebels.
"I am extremely concerned and worried," the state-run Xinhua News Agency quoted Jiang Zemin as saying Wednesday. "We appeal for an immediate end to the airstrike and to put the Kosovo issue back on the track of political solution."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday night's airstrikes were necessary to prevent "chaos for the entire region and for the rest of us in Europe."
Turkey's Prime Minister Bulan Ecevit said he hoped the conflict in Kosovo "will not turn into another world war."
Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson said events that led to the bombings were a "European tragedy," and Italian Premier Massimo d'Alema called the decision to bomb "painful but inevitable."
At the French Foreign Ministry, workers cleaned off a wall where graffiti said, "NATO assassins, USA go home."
The Vatican issued a statement deploring the strikes, saying "Resorting to force is always a defeat for humanity."
Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi called the strikes "an unavoidable step to prevent a humanitarian atrocity," according to the Kyodo News agency.
Similarly, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's refusal to end attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians made military action necessary.
"History has told us if you sit by and do nothing, you pay a much greater price later on," he said.