The German press devotes wide coverage to the sentence passed in Serbia on those guilty of assassinating the Serbian Prime Minister Djindjic. An article in the FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG (24/05) comments: “The Serbian judges have shown they have courage. Although attempts to intimate them were not lacking, they passed the maximum sentence on the assassins of the man who wanted to extricate Serbia from its moral and political morass. What the judges did not do, because they could not, is condemn the political background of the assassination”. Nonetheless, continues the article, “From that dark March day in Belgrade, when the shots were fired against Djindjic, from year to year it becomes ever clearer that, in spite of his errors, he was an historic figure for Serbia. No politician of comparable stature can be seen on the horizon. Djindjic wanted to take his country into the EU and rapidly transform it into a modern European state. But Serbia did not tolerate this. The country showed itself too small for Djindjic. His assassins were unable to stop the direction in which it is heading, but they did put back Serbia for years”. Writing in the FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU , Norbert Mappes – Niediek says the result of the trial sends out a “positive signal” and comments: “Serbia had turned a fresh page once again”. “The reign of terror ends with this sentence. At least one hopes so: many other assassins whom nobody dares to call by name are still circulating in Serbia. But ever since the party of Djindjic has found a new leadership and is no longer considered an outsider, it is to be hoped that the game will soon be up also for the war criminals”. The last number of the Polish edition of the weekly NEWSWEEK (21/05) dedicates its cover story to the well-known writer Ryszard Kapuscinski who, for many years, was a collaborator of the secret services of the Communist regime. “If he had not consented to collaborate, there would have been no Ryszard Kapuscinski”, a friend of the writer, Ernest Skalski , he too a famous journalist, explained to the magazine. “The security services were one of the State elements that then surrounded us on all sides. Wherever a person worked, he worked for the State: whenever he had to go to the doctor, he became a patient of the State; whenever he went on holiday, he went to a state recreational centre. So having contacts and conversations with this State and its authorities was something quite natural. Obviously, we were well aware that the security services were not the same as the health services, but both were services of the State. In the 1960s it entered no one’s head to refuse on principle an invitation from the security services, just like an invitation from any other organ of State”. According to Skalski, for Kapuscinski being a collaborator “was the price to be paid to be able to be the correspondent of the Polish Press Agency (PPA). The membership card of an official agency opened many doors (…). If he had not worked for the PPA, he would not have written his most important books”. “It’s thriving, but lethal”: that’s the title chosen for a comment by Mark Curtis on ten years of arms exports by the Blair government published in the British daily THE GUARDIAN (22/05). “Despite the hoopla surrounding the idea of an ‘ethical’ foreign policy”, according to Curtis “the championing of arms exports and a strong defence policy” were “always the prime minister’s ambition”. Great Britain is now “the world’s second-largest arms exporter. In the past three years, arms have been exported to 19 of the 20 countries identified in the Foreign Office’s annual human rights report as ‘countries of concern'”. But it’s not only the profit of this trade – between half a billion and one billion pounds sterling per year – explains the journalist: “the sale of arms supports foreign policy by reinforcing relations with key allies, which are often repressive elites”. If “a really ethical foreign policy should provide for the suspension of exports of products of the war industry”, at least, hopes Curtis, let us put an end to “arms exports to countries that violate human rights”. “Has Lebanon ever existed, a blessed land of harmonious cohabitation between different communities and religions?… Every day and for too long, alas, the country has distanced itself from this idyllic image” observes Dominique Quinio in an editorial in the French Catholic daily LA CROIX (23/05). “The current explosion of violence – she remarks – finds its fuel” in the Palestinian camps “where the refugees of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their descendents have survived for years. In these enclaves of under-privilege, the recruiters of the more fundamentalist movements have no difficulty in winning over militants ready to die. Poverty, inactivity and the lack of a future fuel hatred”. In this scenario “Westerners and the UNO are exerting pressure so that international justice may judge the political crimes committed in Lebanon, including the assassination of Rafic Hariri: an international intervention that not everyone in the Middle East likes”. And meanwhile, “many foreign interests are waging war by proxy. The Lebanese, for their part, are suffering its consequences”.
