Various comments in the German press are devoted to the positive outcome of the summit between North and South Korea. Thus, Till Fähnders ( FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU – 4/10) writes, under the title: “Korea’s 3rd of October”, with evident reference to the historic date of German reunification, “Less than a year after the terror aroused by the first atomic test of Pjongjang, since yesterday a plan of action exists to terminate the North Korean atomic programme. This significant step forward will in the long term remove North Korea from conflict with the USA, assuming it abides by the terms of the settlement. The beginning of the end of the North Korean nuclear programme also eliminates the obstacles to a rapprochement between the two neighbouring countries”. “At the end of this process, however, it is not indispensable to achieve reunification. Far more important is that the developments – the negotiations on atomic weapons and the rapprochement between the two Koreas – should lead North Korea, a country of abject poverty ruled by a Stalinist regime, to increased prosperity and democracy”. An editorial in the FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG comments: “The second summit of the two Koreas… is in itself something remarkable. For it overcomes, in all senses, the minefields and barbed wire, and helps, we hope, to reduce tensions. Moreover, the attention paid to the summit in Pjongjang also reflect the opposing developments in the Korean peninsula, as happened formerly in our country during the meetings between East Germany and West Germany”. “Putin’s plays his hand”: that’s the title of the editorial by Dominique Quinio in the French Catholic daily LA CROIX ( 3/10), dedicated to the intention of the Russian President to present himself anew as a candidate in the elections in 2008, at the end of his second term, for the post of prime minister. “As he had pledged to do – comments Quinio – Vladimir Putin will not amend the Constitution. He will simply get round it”. And if “European and American commentators speak of an internal affair” and “no one openly condemns” it, Condoleeza Rice warns of “too strong concentration of powers”. “One can understand that, for citizens and investors, the promised stability is more reassuring than the uncertainties of a difficult succession – argues the editorialist -. But the extreme personalization of Russian power, a restricted view of civil liberties and the policy conducted by Putin in Chechnya ought to authorize its neighbours and partners to express some concern about a truly special conception of electoral and democratic processes, if only to demonstrate they aren’t fools”. “The Church cannot remain indifferent to relativism. The Church must speak out in opposing all attempts to establish a morality understood as the result of democratic choices”, said the Archbishop of Warsaw Kazimierz Nycz in an interview with the GAZETA POLSKA (40/2007). “I hope the Church of Warsaw can be a sign of contradiction in the contemporary world, if it is limited to being merely horizontal and seeks to impoverish human life by expelling God”, he added. Responding to a question regarding the often-claimed lack of clear spiritual authority in Poland, after the death of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (1981) and that of John Paul II (2005), Archbishop Nycz placed the emphasis instead on the structural transformations of the Polish Church that have taken place since the times of Cardinal Wyszynski, who was simultaneously President of the Bishops’ Conference, Primate of Poland and Metropolitan Archbishop of Warsaw. “This concentration of powers determined in a clear-cut way his functions at the head of the Polish Church. If we consider also the enormous authority enjoyed by Cardinal Wyszynski, reinforced by his struggle against Communism, and his years in prison, we have to conclude that such a situation will never be repeated again… We ought not to forget, however, that true authority may remain in the shadows, just as Cardinal Wojtyla was able to remain in the shadows” when he “was Archbishop of Krakow”. “There’s a land that is called Palestine and that each claims as its own territory. Naturally each advances his own reasons, and it’s easy for those who have a just claim, like the Jews, to transform it into error”, says the Jewish writer Aharon Appelfeld , in an interview with the Italian Catholic daily AVVENIRE (04/10). “The politicians who only see things in black and white – he continues – have never been willing to reason according to the complexity of things”, but “it’s right to underline that the Jews are not the guilty ones, nor the Arabs innocent angels”. In short, according to Appelfeld, “we must understand that reason and right are not” confined to one side only. “I’m optimistic – he says -. Peace is possible, but it can happen in an unexpected way, as if by magic” given that there are “people in both countries who want it”. In the meantime, “we need to go on living and get up each morning without thinking” that a bomb “could explode over your head. So – he concludes – after two years of talk about nuclear bombs against Israel we have begun once again to eat, sleep, laugh…to be happy and to weep as if nothing had happened”.
