The Iraqi crisis, which continues to cause conflicts, massacred, deaths and injuries on both sides, monopolises the attention of the main international dailies. They continue to analyse the role of the USA and the possible future government of the country . “American impotence in response to the Iraqi plague”, is for example the headline in Le Monde (29/10), according to which “following the series of lethal terrorist attacks that caused 43 deaths and over 200 wounded in Baghdad on Monday, 27 October, the Americans are increasingly thinking that the USA is getting bogged down in a ‘dirty’ war in Iraq”. According to an opinion poll conducted by CNN cited by the French daily, in fact, “50% of Americans now disapprove of the way in which their country is conducting the war in Iraq, against 45% who approve (…). In April, the same polling agency indicated that 80% of Americans approved the action of the Bush administration in Iraq, against 18% who disapproved”. “Terror in Baghdad”, is the title of the editorial dedicated by Le Monde to the Iraqi crisis, in which the paper underlines the “paradoxes” of a war “conducted in the name of the campaign against terrorism. With the motivation of finding weapons of mass destruction notes the French daily the war was launched against a country guilty of crimes against humanity, but that did not offer bases of support to radical Islam. Six months later, Iraq is one of the major operational theatres of Islamic terrorism”. “A people held hostage”, is the title of the editorial signed by Dominique Quinio in La Croix (28/10), in which the author observes that the terrorist attacks in Baghdad “have accomplished their sinister mission: that of instilling fear, discouraging the humanitarian organizations (…), frightening away potential investors, comforting a part of Arab public opinion ready to rejoice in the successes of the Iraqi ‘resistance’ and, if possible, sowing doubt among the Anglo-American forces”. Also in the view of Elio Maraone ( Avvenire, 20/10), “in spite of the assurances of George W. Bush, who yesterday too hardly went beyond slogans (…), the bloodshed of the first days of Ramadan raises fears that Iraq may sink into an abyss of uncontrollable violence”. Commenting on the terrorist attack on the Red Cross in Baghdad, Arne Perras writes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (29/10): “ Each organization must be able to independently evaluate this risk in Iraq. Putting pressure on it at the political level is a mistake. US Secretary of State Colin Powell has urged the humanitarian organization not to pull out as otherwise only the terrorists would win. This appeal could have been spared“. Of a contrary view is Jacques Schuster in Die Welt (29/10): “ It is always the job of the Red Cross to help people in need in whatever hell it finds itself having to operate. If it wants to take seriously the principles by which it is inspired, it cannot abandon Iraq. Just as in the past it did not pull out when Chechen terrorists took 3000 people hostage in a hospital, killing 200 of them, or in December 1996, when 20 doctors and nurses of the Red Cross were executed in Grozny“. There’s also wide coverage of Iraq in the Spanish daily El Paìs of 28/10, also because the Conference of donor countries for the reconstruction of Iraq took place in Spain in recent days. “In the current Iraqi scenario the paper writes the Conference of donors in Madrid, in spite of its good intentions, may seem a bit of a joke. Rebuilding the destroyed Arab country is very praiseworthy. However, long before beginning this titanic task, in which thousands of civilians who have nothing to do with the armed conflict will be involved, it is indispensable to pacify the country. No judgement will commit massive resources to reconstruct something that is daily being destroyed and bleeding to death”. The debate on the crucifix in Italian schools has also reached the German press. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ( FAZ) publishes (29/10) a comment signed hjf: “ The sentence [on the removal of crucifixes in state schools] might lead one to think that also the country of the Pope has taken the road of pluralist intolerance against traditional religious convictions“. “ The Moslem father, the modern judge and highest judicial court of the land must take into account the fact that convinced Catholics still exist in Italy and are unwilling to deprive themselves and their own children of the signs of culture and of faith, with which Europe has grown; not even in the name of human dignity and equality of religions“.————————————————————————
