“Freedom of expression and elections may await in Iraq, at least for the time being”: that’s the title of an article in which David Rohle, in the Herald Tribune (19/6), analyses the turbulent situation of Iraq in the aftermath of the war, after the clashes with the American army in recent days. “If elections were to be held in Iraq today that’s the prediction of the author of the article the Islamic fundamentalist parties of Iranian origin could win in the south of Iraq, (…) while a new version of the party of Saddam Hussein could dominate the elections in central and northern Iraq”. The political “reorganization” in Iraq is also analysed in Le Monde of 18/6, with an article in which Sophie Shihab notes that “after 35 years of repression under the regime of Saddam Hussein, the Shiite community of Iraq, that represents 60% of the population, has regained its liberty. For the moment, far from using its own demographic predominance, it is adopting a conciliatory manner towards the American authorities”. As far as the Americans are concerned, observes Patrick Jarreau in the same paper, “the establishment of a new political system in Iraq has been revealed as far slower and more difficult than a part of American leaders had predicted. The conferences organized in Washington, from the summer of 2002 on, between the representatives of the lay, Islamic and Kurdish parties, have not permitted the consequences of the toppling of the regime of Saddam Hussein to be predicted, as the political experts of the Ministry of Defence hoped”. In Iraq, writes Giorgio Ferrari in the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire (19/6), “the war is very far from having been concluded (…). Just the absence of the defeated enemy, the physical lack of his unconditional surrender, obliges us to recognise that this war is not yet over, forty days after the official conclusion of hostilities (…). ‘A little Vietnam’, as some independent Iraqi news sheet has written, one of the many such papers that, inebriated by the sudden wave of freedom the country is enjoying, now throng the newsstands and shops of Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkut, Nasinyah and Trikrit”. “The new religious movements”: that’s the title of a survey “in instalments” on the situation of the laity today being conducted in the French Catholic daily La Croix which, in its edition of 18/6 analyses the sects, considered by the French a “danger” in the regime of separation between State and Church that renders the “control” of such sects “difficult”. In France, according to a report issued in 1995, there are 172 sect-like organizations and a “nebula” of at least 800 “satellites”; altogether they involve some 160,000 regular or occasional members and 100,000 sympathisers. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 14 June enters the continental debate on the Convention on the future of Europe. Referring to the historic Treaty of Rome of 1857, the Frankfurt daily underlines the extreme “ diversity of the European political context”, and asks whether “the adjective ‘historic’ could ever be proposed one day” for the draft Constitution. The answer is no. For the fact is that “the complexity of the reality, of the political development and enlargement of Europe will undoubtedly require further constitutional compromises and reforms: indeed these will have to be taken even before the present treaty enters into force”. The FAZ returns to the issue of Europe on 16 June with an editorial signed by Paul Hefty which laments the absence [in the draft Constitution] “of a clear definition of what Europe is and ought to be”, and recurs to the lack of any “clear reference” to the Christian roots of Europe “without which the concept of human dignity becomes self-referential and devoid of foundation”. A further criticism of Europe is that made by the sociologist Otto Hondrich in Der Spiegel of 16 June. In a long article with the title “The power that makes order”, Hondrich ironically defines the specific features of some areas of the world at the dawn of the third millennium, as “a global distribution of tasks, thanks to which in Asia people work, in the Arab world, people pray, in Africa people suffer, in America people arm themselves, while in Europe people continue to discuss everything”. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1215 N.ro relativo : 45 Data pubblicazione : 21/06/2003
