The summit of the G8 and the new UN resolution on Iraq monopolise the attention of the international press. “Iraq, victory of Bush at the UNO”, is the front-page headline in Le Monde (10/6), over an article pointing out that “the UN Security Council unanimously adopted, on 8 June, Resolution 1546 that organises the passage of sovereignty to Iraq”. “Mission accomplished” is the comment of Corine Lesnes in the article inside the same paper: “The Americans have obtained what they wanted from the Security Council, the endorsement by the international community of the interim Iraqi government that will take over the reins of power from them after 30 June”. The new resolution is “the ninth voted on Iraq over the past year. Will it have just as little impact asks the author of the article as the last resolutions, unanimously adopted but without ever producing any concrete results?”. The new UN Resolution is published in full by La Croix (9/6): “The misgivings expressed in recent weeks by France, and also by Russia, China, Germany or Algeria, have forced the Bush administration and the new Iraqi government to spell out in detail their relations in terms of security. (…) At the end, the American forces will remain to control security in Iraq for at least a year”. “Bush asks NATO to assume a wider role in Iraq”, is the headline in the Herald Tribune (10/6), over an article in which Brian Knowlton points out that “President George W. Bush, profiting from a wave of new international support for the transition planned by the United States in Iraq, said he would like to see NATO play a wider role”. “The miracle of the resolution”: that’s the title of the editorial signed by Vittorio E. Parsi in the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire (10/6), in which it is emphasized that the new Security Council resolution represents “a victory for the interim government of the new post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, which can claim a new international success after its domestic success in disarming the new militias. It’s a defeat for the terrorists who are objectively more isolated both at the domestic Iraqi and at the international level, as would seen to be demonstrated also by the successful liberation of the Italian hostages”. The German press devotes extensive coverage to the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy (D-Day: 6 June 1944), in which a German authority, in the person of Chancellor Schröder, participated for the first time. “ It was a commemoration with more than a pinch of nostalgia, because it is inseparable from the feeling that something is coming to an end or has already ended“, writes Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (3/6). “ For today, just at a time of the great atmosphere of reconciliation, people are asking whether the West can still be saved, whether the reserves of common interests, objectives and values between Americans and Europeans still suffice to be able to form an effective and firm bond also in the 21st century. Not only the pessimists see, at the end of the catastrophic experience of the Iraqi conflict, a division of the West, indeed its dissolution as an entity capable of acting […] Probably both sides, the Americans and the Europeans organized in the European Union, must adjust to the fact that Atlantic rivalry and competition in the field of projects for a new political world order will not in future remain an isolated fact“. Nonetheless, the paper adds, “ this partnership can only function if both sides serve it and invest in it. Otherwise, the West will be doomed to extinction“. The cover story in the weekly Der Spiegel is also devoted to D-Day. “ A favourable occasion may be presented on the beaches of Normandy to induce the US President to make concessions during secret talks and to demonstrate a new unity in the eyes of the world“. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1304 N.ro relativo : 44 Data pubblicazione : 12/06/04
