“The United States faced by growing Iraqi hostility”: that’s the front-page headline in the Herald Tribune (18/9), in an article in which Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger point out that the “most formidable enemy” in Iraq, in these months, “may be the resentment of the ordinary Iraqi to American military occupation”. This is an analysis confirmed albeit off the record by some officials in the US Department of Defence, who say they are “worried” by the US role in the country and suggest that the “disaffection” of the Iraqi people towards the Americans depends “not just on the lack of electricity and other essential services, but also on cultural factors that are increasing the anger against the foreign military presence”. “From Iraq to the economy, George Bush in difficulty“, is the front-page headline in Le Monde (18/9). “The economy and Iraq”: these, according to the French daily, are “the two dominant issues fourteen months before the presidential elections of 2004, an electoral pre-campaign in which the Democratic candidates are multiplying their criticisms of the Republican George W. Bush”. On these two issues, according to Le Monde, “the American President is on the defensive and the public opinion polls report a substantial drop in people’s trust in him”. No less intractable is American “fiscal policy”, in trying to cope with “a colossal deficit: 525 billion dollars”. The WTO summit in Cancun is the subject chosen by La Croix (16/6) for its front-page headline: “The southern hemisphere claims the failure of Cancun”, headlines the Catholic French daily, which reports that the interministerial conference of the World Trade Organization “failed to reach an agreement due to the refusal of the countries of the South to surrender to the countries of the North”. The question of farm subsidies, writes Nathalie Lacube in the ample dossier dedicated by the French Catholic daily to the summit, was “the main bone of contention“, which led to “antagonism” between the G22 and the US-UE “tandem”. Commenting on the failure of the WTO negotiations, Konrad Mrusek notes (16/9) in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ( Faz): “ The rich man’s club, as the trade organization once was, has become a more multilateral association. With the entry of China two years ago, the balance of power within the WTO has changed. China has a need of allies for its export plans. At Cancún, we witnessed America and Europe allied in an unprecedented defensive, also because they were subjected to a kind of two-pronged attack, … since, in order to placate the critics of globalization, the WTO had admitted some 2,000 NGOs to the conference. And the rich fans of the poor welcomed the failure of the conference as their victory. But is it really a victory of the developing countries, if customs duties on farm trade are not eliminated and the WTO is damaged? It is in reality a defeat for the poor”. Commenting on the informal meeting in Berlin between Schröder, Chirac and Blair, K.F. notes in the same paper (17/9): “ The most important players in Europe in the field of security policy seem at least to have understood that a state of permanent disagreement is to no one’s advantage, not even, we may add, to their European partners. And if some of these were offended by not having been invited to Berlin, the German-British-French rapprochement ought to represent a sufficient consolation“. The weekly Der Spiegel of 15/9 contains an article on the assassination of the Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh: “ The macabre parallels with the death of the charismatic premier Palme 17 years ago demonstrate that politics and the police delude themselves in supposing that the former model country is a happy island of peaceful people“; on the contrary: “… behind an apparently idyllic surface… that guarantees exemplary prosperity to everyone, is hidden a completely different reality, far from politically correct. For example, explicit forms of racism, anti-semitism and xenophobia are widespread in Sweden and have given rise to violent neo-Nazi groups”. The Spanish paper “ La Vanguardia” ( 15/9) dedicates wide coverage to the Swedish rejection of the euro. According to EU Commissioner for the economy Pedro Solbes, “the euro will continue to be in any case the first or second leading currency in the world”, whereas “the Swedish economy does not have any excessive clout inside the European Union”. Another Spanish daily, the Abc of 17/9 enters the debate on the failure of the WTO summit in Cancun by arguing that the failure to conclude the negotiations is “a failure for everyone”, since the WTO, in spite of the “many imperfections it may have” does at least have the “virtue of being a multilateral institution, with common rules and a mechanism for the resolution of disputes that has not hesitated to condemn, on various occasions, the planet’s greatest trading power, the USA”. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1232 N.ro relativo : 62 Data pubblicazione : 20/09/2003
