Bush’s State of the Union address to the Congress is variously analysed by the German press. “ Anyone who begins the last two years of his own term of office with the appeal to people to have a little more patience, and give him a further chance, one last time, is not well placed“, observes Dietmar Ostermann in the Frankfurter Rundschau (25/1). “ How little by now Bush is able to determine the order of the day in Washington, can be seen from his programme of government. Half of his speech was in support of a little more breathing space for Iraq. The other half was an attempt to find points in common at the level of domestic policy with a Congress now dominated by the Democrats. But here too it is not Bush who is calling the shots: the reform of social security systems, a reform for immigration, a new deal in energy policy – in all these issues it is no longer the President who is determining the direction in which the USA is heading with bold ideas and great visions”. A comment in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (24/1) says: “ Bush has never been so weak. This is no longer the President who intoned about the axis of evil of the world or held out the vision of flights to Mars. It is a President who can no longer conceal his disastrous situation: in foreign policy nothing is moving ahead, in domestic policy his hands are tied. The most serious thing is the fact that the Americans have lost confidence in their President, in his abilities as leader to solve the crises”. On US policy in Iraq, the German weekly Der Spiegel (22/1) interviewed Condoleeza Rice on German reactions to the new American strategy: “ I found the German government quite understanding about what we are trying to do – said Rice – … We believe we have responsibility towards the region and towards the world, to help Iraq gain stability. We also understand the fact that the responsibility for what Iraq will do rests with the Iraqi government and Iraqi citizens themselves. The United States must play its part. I found wide support for what the President is intending to do“. To the assassination of the Turkish-Armenian journalist and writer Hrant Dink, killed by a young ultra-nationalist in Istanbul last week, the British daily THE GUARDIAN (23/01) dedicates a comment analysing Turkey’s position towards Europe. His murder, points out the author of the piece, “is not an isolated incident. Over the last 15 years, according to the Committee for the protection of journalists, a further 18 Turkish journalists have been killed as a result of their work, placing Turkey in eighth place among the countries in the world where people die for professional reasons”. Pointing out that Dink “had already been subjected to numerous trials for his opinions on the mass murder of Ottoman Armenians in 1915”, the paper recalls his commitment “to pacifying this historic conflict” that remains, according to the author, “ one of the key points, together with the Cypriot and Kurdish questions, that Turkey will have to solve in its process of rapprochement with Europe. Only thus can justice be done to the country itself, crushed between Europe and the Middle East, fettered to the relics of its own past and trying desperately to conciliate the needs of the forces at conflict in its own interior”.”Fragile strength”: that’s the headline that the French Catholic daily LA CROIX places over its editorial of 23/01, dedicated to the abbé Pierre, apostle to the poor, who had died the previous day. “ He had seemed to us eternal, eternally old, fragile, but at the same time filled with anger and struggling against the injustices in the world, never resigned” comments Dominique Quinio. The abbé Pierre had two vocations: “ that of being a priest, i.e. at the service of his fellowmen, and that of being a rebel. The homeless, refugees, immigrants: the least of men were his companions” and now “the work of the abbé Pierre will continue thanks to the galaxy of his movements… No doubt he would smile in amusement at the wave of tributes that are rightly being paid to him today, preferring that thoughts and prayers be dedicated instead to his heirs”. “The abbé Pierre formed an exception for France; an exception that fascinated her for over half a century” observes Henri Tincq in the French daily LE MONDE (24/01). “A country divided, dechristianized and resting on its privileges identified itself with this simple and rebellious priest, with this prophet who sought out as his companions the damned of this earth”. This shows, according to Tincq, that “ France has a need for shared figures to deceive itself into thinking she is united and to progress together with these living myths. The abbé Pierre was one of those rare people who unite, defy controversy and command the silence of respect”.”The Court of Budapest is to rule today whether religious leaders should be considered public figures” : that’s one of the titles on the homepage of 25/01 of the website of the Hungarian daily MAGYAR NEMZET (www.mno.hu) . “The issue came to the fore during the hunt for presumed collaborators with the former Communist regime. Jewish, Protestant and Catholic leaders have been involved in the affair. If the Court establishes that the leaders of the Churches are public figures, the archive will have the obligation to hand over to the investigating authorities the documents kept secret before 1989”.
