Japan did much better yesterday, albeit belatedly, in stepping up to its responsibilities in sharing the financial burden for the multilateral force.

The multilateral force that the Security Council authorized involved, as Holbrooke never failed to note, no Americans and very few dollars.

But I think what you're seeing here is the perils and problems of deploying multilateral military force in the post-cold-war world.

When Jefferson proposed creating a multilateral force to stop the pirates, Europe went on bribing them.

The hype about multilateral force is getting out of hand.

It would also integrate German and Japanese forces into a larger multilateral force.

But diplomats at both international organizations said that strong sentiment against armed intervention in Haiti would complicate and possibly block forming a multilateral force.

But several of the Caribbean leaders said they would support the use of multilateral force, if necessary, to restore Haiti's elected Government.

I'm talking about a multilateral force with orders to shoot to kill.

The result is to connect up a network of contracts by a uniform set of rules and thus give them multilateral force.