A Europe divided and world public opinion demonstrating for peace: these are the two aspects of the USA-Iraq crisis most emphasized by the main international dailies in recent days. “Iraq: Europe torn between Chirac and Blair”, is the front page headline in Le Monde (18/2). Yet on the following day (reporting on the EU summit in Brussels) the same paper opened by exclaiming: “Europe calls on Iraq to disarm”, and comments: “The Fifteen have papered over their disagreements on the Iraqi crisis”, adopting “a common document that recommends the search for a peaceful solution in the framework of the UNO”. Iraq is “a test-case for the European Union”, notes La Croix (18/2), in an editorial in which Bruno Frappat declares: “The European Union must not become the first ‘collateral’ victim of a possible war. The succession of diplomatic activities, political events…and disputes that have intervened after the unanimous vote, on 8 November, of Resolution 1441 of the Security Council, will remain enshrined in the history of the continent as a crisis of rare intensity”. The “paroxysm of divisions”, according to the French Catholic daily, occurred on the eve of the demonstrations of 15/2 , which “due to their scale…ought to have as their logical consequence a softening of the positions” adopted by those European countries favourable to an armed conflict in Iraq. According to the Herald Tribune (19/2), “it would be an error not to recognize that France, Germany and the other diplomacies that oppose an immediate recourse to force are acting not merely out of personal stubbornness and resentment against American power. The demonstrations against the war throughout the world have demonstrated how widespread the public fear is”. The efforts to avert the war in Iraq and the demonstrations for peace also occupy a large part of the pages in the German press. On the mission of peace of John Paul II the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 15/2 notes: “The Pope is revealing himself as a global player of great professionalism on the world political scene”. “While the secular players are entangled in their short-term interests”, the Pope – says the paper – “enunciates criteria of humanity that hold good for eternity. While US President George W. Bush is creating the atmosphere of a Protestant fundamentalist, he [the Pope] moves without ideological baggage on his solid foundation of faith, but also in the consciousness of the errors committed in the past in the name of faith”. Writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau of 17/2, Dietmar Ostermann comments: “From Berlin to London, from Melbourne to New York, the millions of people who took to the streets are only the vanguard of a sense of anxiety spread throughout the world, that transcends Iraq. It’s the fear lest, at the beginning of the 21st century, the world may too soon abandon diplomatic weapons to seek refuge instead in military logic, not as a justified last resort in exceptional cases, but as an apparently simpler means”. Commenting on the demonstration in Germany, Mark Siemons of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (17/2) writes: “People of different backgrounds testified to the fact that they are not convinced by the official reasons for the threatened war. They demonstrated not so much in support of the government as in support of universal values, which link the new world with the old. So this day did not mark the triumph of the pacifist movement in the sense of a world of alternative life. If any triumph there were, it was that of democracy”. “The crusade of George W. Bush”, is the cover title in the weekly “Der Spiegel” of 17/2, which dedicates a feature to the religious content of the American President’s speeches: “With the attack on Baghdad, the US president wants to perform a divine mission. Rarely have the national interests of power and fundamentalist bigotry been so deeply united in religious America”, write Hans Hoyng and Gerhard Spörl. “The closer the war against Iraq comes, the more often does the president speak of his faith and his values. He insists that his actions are profoundly influenced by his faith. In America it’s a foregone conclusion that, in times of national crisis, the president will transform himself into a preacher offering comfort and strength”.
