“ Tragic intolerance” is the title of one of the editorials in The Times (13/07) in which the paper reflects on the astonishment and horror of the British, who have discovered they have been nurturing a group of fanatical terrorists in their own midst. “ What links did the perpetrators of the London bombings have with Al-Qaeda and terrorist networks abroad? is one of the questions posed by the paper How did they obtain the explosive? And how was it possible for them to keep their plans wholly secret, without arousing suspicions among their own families, friends and fellow-Muslims?“. According to the paper, “ too often the terrorist view has been not only tolerated but also probably disseminated in the mosques by improvised imams, who have emerged from villages in Pakistan, unable to speak English and unprepared to guide young Muslims in a Western society. Adrift in their work, they have solved their problems by reviving a cruel interpretation of the jihad. This may influence only a tiny minority, but this minority is able to sow destruction among the Muslim community itself and within other communities. The majority of all those who respect the law must therefore assume the responsibility to prevent the cult of nihilistic extremism and to spread the imperative of the intolerance of intolerance”. France too is on high alert in terms of Islamic terrorism. Not only has the government taken the decision to suspend the Treaty of Schengen on freedom of frontiers within the EU area, but Le Monde (13/07) emphasises that “ Conversions to radical Islam are worrying the French police“. “ Government offices explains Piotr Smolar have intervened in 1610 official cases, referred to forms of active proselytism“. “ Among those who have criminal records or are already known to the police, over 10 percent discovered Islam in prison. One of these converts, the German Christian Ganczarski, who is suspected of being involved in the attack on the synagogue at Djerba in Tunisia, which caused 11 deaths in April 2002, and was detained in France in June 2003, is known to have visited Afghanistan on various occasions, where he is said to have met Osama Bin Laden, head of Al Qaeda“. A worrying aspect of the phenomenon of conversions to Islam consists as Le Monde points out is the fact that “ social precariousness is a recurrent circumstance of conversion … more than half of the individuals studied are without any declared source of income and a third officially unemployed“. Within the group studied “ over 31% how low-skilled jobs (manual workers, service personnel). Many especially work for private security firms, or as workers in airports, considered ‘highly sensitive'”. The German press comments on Schröder’s attempt to obtain Germany’s admission to the UN Security Council. “ There are other medium-size powers that consider themselves equally important to enter into the executive plans of the world organization”, comments the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (13/7): “ But it would be deplorable if in the struggle to enter the Security Council, other parts of the reform of the UNO were to be blocked: from the scandalous composition of the Commission for Human Rights to the corruption in UN headquarters, there are many things that need to be urgently changed in the UNO. The Germany would do well to draw a lesson from its experiences in New York of the fact that the UNO is not the holier-than-thou organization for fostering understanding among peoples that it pretends to be. In that way it would also be easier to accept the possibility of not obtaining a seat on the Security Council“. Knut Pries writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau observes: “ In all the machinations about the reform of the Security Council there are so many imponderables as to render the prognosis far more uncertain than it was at the time of the dispute on Iraq“. And writing in Die Welt, Jacques Schuster comments: “ In contrast to Helmut Kohl, who in his time had observed the efforts of Kinkel at a complacent distance, Schröder has risked his neck. For him, membership of the Security Council is the most important proof of the presumed greater influence of Germany in the world. He hoped to obtain it especially with the help of his friend Putin and of an accommodating conduct in relations with Beijing. Unfortunately, the Chancellor has forgotten to clarify what are Germany’s plans inside the Security Council and what objectives it wants to represent, apart from the satisfaction of German prestige. Probably Schröder will be unable to remedy this oversight. For the time being, a place on the Security Council is out of the question. The Chancellor’s most important foreign policy project is in tatters“. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1405 N.ro relativo : 54 Data pubblicazione : 15/07/05
