The peace plan proposed by American president George Bush to Isaelis and Palestinians on the eve of the G8 summit in Canada monopolizes the attention of the main international dailies. Arafat’s “rejection” of the Bush peace proposal is commented on by the Herald Tribune (26/6) , in an article in which Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson report that “the Palestinian leader (…) has sent back to bearer the request of president Bush for a new Palestinian leadership, asserting that only the Palestinian people may decide who should be elected as their leader”. “Bush, Palestine, without Arafat”, is the dry headline in Le Monde (26/6), which also contains, apart from its editorial and a front cover article, an extensive “dossier” dedicated to a survey on American Jews (who are said to be “in a state of alert”) and comments and reflections by leading experts. “President Bush declares the editorial in the French daily has proposed (…) a strange exchange to the Palestinians: the USA will help you to obtain your own State if you get rid of your leader, Yasser Arafat. Bush did not actually pronounce the name of Arafat; he spoke of the need for a new Palestinian ‘leadership’. But the sense of his proposal is beyond doubt: the USA asks for the departure of Arafat; she will no longer negotiate with him; perhaps she will accept that the veteran Palestinian leader may yet occupy some honorary position, but no longer his present post” as chairman of the Palestinian Authority . Le Monde calls the “method” used by the American president “ extraordinary, unjust and arrogant”; it is aimed, the paper says, at achieving “ the obsessive objective” of Ariel Sharon: “the elimination, at least political, of the man who embodies the Palestinian national movement”. The “political process” prospected by Bush, i.e. the possibility of achieving the establishment of a Palestinian State and the end of the Israeli occupation of the territories, according to the French daily, is the right one, but only on condition that it be respected by both sides: by the Palestinians, who “must vote at the end of the year, and by the Israelis, who would be revealed as “irresponsible” if they failed to consider the second part of the American president’s speech, just as important as the first. The summit of Seville and the issue of immigration are the focus of comments in the German press. In the Frankfurter Rundschau ( FR) of 21/6, Martin Winter observes: “ If Europe does not want to betray its own values, it must put an end to the black market in immigration. The unresolved problem is becoming a fertile terrain for the growth of the right-wing populist movements. The crux of the problem is not so much clandestine immigration as the lack of a European concept of immigration“. In an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ( FAZ) of 21/6, Peter Hort writes: “ The fundamental objective of a European law on immigration and on asylum with minimum common standards has not advanced by one millimetre. The blame for that is the lack of unity among the member states“. The FAZ of 22/6 comments: “ Immigration has become a burning issue which is disturbing citizens. Sanctions against the countries from which clandestine immigrants come may be applied, if their governments have an ambiguous attitude to the trafficking in human beings. But it is equally true” the paper continues “ that conditions of decent life and acceptable political situations will in the long run reduce the pressure to emigrate“. The new German law on immigration was contested for presumed irregularity at the time of its approval; the question was submitted to the judgement of the Federal President, Johannes Rau, who promulgated the law on 20/6 and criticized the parties that had fuelled the controversy. By having subtracted himself “ from the pressures of his party, the SPD“, and those of the opposition, comments Georg Paul Hefty in the FAZ of 21/6, “ Johannes Rau has become a strong president“. “ Virtuous criticism by the president“, is the headline in the FR of 21/6. “ The president said the indispensable minimum at the political level. And that’s just what was needed“, notes Thomas Kröter. In number 26 of the weekly Die Zeit of 20/6, Richard Herzinger observes: “ The signature of Johannes Rau appended to the law on immigration only temporarily placates the polemic on immigration, because this is one of the most important questions for the future of Germany and modern Europe“. In Herzinger‘s view, “ the idea of German politicians of being able to blind the country against this dynamic is absurd“.
