Attention is devoted to the Pope in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 17/04. In his article “the future projects of the Pope“, Heinz-Joachim Fischer says that “ the strength of the Pope seems weakened, but not broken” and notes, with regard to the celebrations of Holy Week, that “it seems to some almost as if his tireless campaign against the war in Iraq has aroused new strength in him.” Attention is also devoted to the Pope’s new encyclical “Ecclesia de Eucharistia”. Published in the precise moment of Holy Week, it is clearly aimed “ only at believers of the Catholic Church“; indeed “ there are some in the Vatican“, according to the journalist “ who go so far as to link the encyclical on the eucharist with John Paul II’s publicity in his relations with the Orthodox churches” and in this regard he lists the forthcoming journeys of the Pope. “ Licence to kill” is the title of the article of Barbara Supp in the weekly Der Spiegel of 4/04 in which the journalists speculates on the victims of the war in Iraq: “ We’ll never know how many Iraqis were killed by US troops in their advance on Baghdad”, but the experience of the 1st Gulf War suggest that the consequences of the ‘licence to kill’ will remain lodged in the American psyche. “After Iraq, where is America heading?”: that’s the front-page headline in Le Monde (16/4), again dedicated to Iraq. A war “almost like any other” is commented on by Jan Kreuze, who observes: “The lesson of this new war is clear: military power and the capacity to use it will permit the USA to plan in the greatest tranquillity other wars against the countries of the third world (…). That doesn’t mean that Washington is ready to renew the experience in the near future. But it’s quite clear that the administration now intends to use the threat of a military intervention a great deal more widely that is has done hitherto”. “Iraq in the American era”, is the headline in La Croix (14/4), according to which “the administration of Iraq is the great reconstruction site with which the government of George Bush now has to come to grips”. “The road to Damascus”, by contrast, is the headline in the Herald Tribune, in which it is noted that “ the Bush administration is right to be alarmed and angry with Syria“ , which is “a totalitarian state led by a religious minority which has not scrupled to have recourse to repression to maintain itself in power”: in spite of that, concludes the American daily , “war against Syria remains without any sense”, whereas it is always possible to have recourse to “ diplomatic or economic sanctions to encourage Damascus to reconsider its hostile policy” after the fall of Saddam. Another issue commented on by Le Monde (17/4) is the signing of the EU membership treaty by ten new member states. According to Le Monde, “the signing of the membership treaty by ten new member countries marks an historic stage in European construction”, even if “divergent views” are being aroused by the “difficult debate on the key questions linked to the functioning of an enlarged Union”.
