Diplomatic efforts need to be “europeanized”: that’s the crux of the article by Valery Giscard d’Estaing, published on the front page of Le Monde (2/10) commenting on the development of the US-Iraq crisis, in the immediate aftermath of the meeting in Vienna to verify the modalities for the sending of UN weapons inspects back to the country of Saddam Hussein. According to the former President of the Republic, now president of the Convention on the future of Europe, French diplomacy “is aimed at organizing international relations on stable bases, integrated by mutually accepted duties that privilege the search for diplomatic solutions to situations of crisis”. Such “solutions”, in Giscard’s view, “must be supported by the pressure of the international community, and organized within the United Nations: the use of force must be considered only as an ultimate remedy, a kind of catastrophic solution of last resort”. The efforts of French diplomacy, concludes Giscard, ought to be “europeanized”, “to bring into relief the common attitudes of our allies, great and small”. The fortieth anniversary of Vatican Council II is, by contrast, the focus of attention of another French daily, La Croix (28-29/9), which contains an extensive dossier on this important anniversary; two special pages are dedicated to the “memories” of one of the leading theologians of the period: Father Yves Congar. Taking his cue from the recent publication of the latest book of the Dominican theologian the “Diary of the Council” Bruno Chenu signs an article in which he emphasizes that “the final concern of Father Congar is for the post-Vatican II”. “I have long realized writes Congar himself that one of the main problems of the aftermath of the Council will be to preserve the organic cooperation the only cooperation that the Council permitted and practiced between bishops and theologians”. “Do the developing countries gain or lose as a result of the brain-drain?” and “what can the rich nations do?”: are the two questions which the weekly “The Economist” tries to answer in its last number, with a special report dedicated to emigration. In particular, suggests the magazine, “the rich nations ought to invest more resources in training in the tertiary sector in the poor nations, with the aim of financing the preparation of those these countries will employ. An example comes from the university of Bucharest which is forging a series of contacts with the Dutch government to train the technological personnel, policemen and nurses that the government itself intends to hire”. But, notes the Economist, “the more difficult it is for migrants to enter a country, the more reluctant they will be to run the risk of being sent home. For the longer the emigrant spends abroad, the more permanent his stay becomes”. The German papers dedicate ample coverage to foreign policy and relations with the USA. Writing in the weekly Die Zeit of 26/9, Reinhard Merkel discusses the Iraq crisis: “ ‘Preventive wars’, in the true sense of the term, are illegal… When the world’s super-power ignores the fundamental norms of international law, of which it is the guarantor, the validity of the norm itself is repudiated. The only way of ensuring world order is to guarantee its juridical foundation“. America, writes Dietrich Alexander in Die Welt of 1/10, “ has a need for partners and cannot ignore the UNO and the Security council in so crucial a question as that of war“. Josef Joffe, columnist of “Die Zeit”, comments on the recent elections to the Bundestag in the US weekly Time of 23/9. In Joffe’s view, the recent electoral campaign ought to have devoted more attention to the difficult economic situation in Germany: “Germany risks becoming the Japan of the continent: a country that has become the victim of its own success, and that refuses to change. Both Schröder and Stoiber are perfect representatives of this malaise: they ask little of the country and the country expects little from them“. The weekly Der Spiegel of 30/9 dedicates its cover story to the crisis of relations between the USA and Germany: according to the historian Heinrich August Winkler, a year after 11 September, “ it is undeniable that the USA and most of her European allies have very different views on the future world order… Bush’s doctrine threatens one of the major achievements of the West: the application of the principle of the supremacy of law to international relations“.
