Reflecting mounting alarm in
the Middle East about how Iraq might respond to a U.S. attack, the Israeli
paper Ha'aretz reported Monday that 1.5 million Israelis don't have
functioning gas masks. The Kuwait Times led with reassurances by the Kuwaiti government that the chances
of an Iraqi chemical attack on Kuwait were "remote," but went on to publicize
the government's advice on how to deal with one. There being a shortage of gas
masks in Kuwait as well as in Israel, the Kuwaiti government announced that gas
masks were "not very effective" anyway. An alternative: Break up pieces of
coal, tie them in a wet towel around one's face, and use that for breathing. An
opinion poll carried out by the Kuwaiti Arabic daily Al-Anba found that
all those questioned were very optimistic and "unanimously ruled out any doubt
regarding the government's preparedness to face any eventuality." Although the
British might be thought to have less cause for alarm, the Times of London led Monday
with a story headlined "British alert over Saddam terror strike" about
contingency plans to counteract biological or chemical attacks in Britain.
In an
interview with the Financial
Times of London, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak predicted a furious Arab
backlash if the United States was to bomb Iraq. "We have to deal with public
opinion in the Arab and Islamic world, and we are going to face a hell of a
problem," Mubarak said. "This is very dangerous--I cannot stand against the
whole weight of popular opinion." While Ha'aretz led its
front page with a report that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had decided not
to fire Mossad chief Danny Yatom for his role in the bungled attempt to
assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Jordan, La Repubblica of Rome
published an interview with the "founder and spiritual guide" of Hamas,
Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who said he wouldn't be happy if an Iraqi missile fell on
Tel Aviv, because "I don't like massacres." But the sheik refused to rule out
further Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, saying that "if Israel attacks us,
the Palestinians have the right to defend themselves."
With Madeleine Albright meeting the Italian foreign
minister in Washington Monday, all the Italian newspapers led with the news
that disagreements about Iraq were seriously dividing the Italian government,
with two of the coalition parties threatening to pull out if Italy put its
military bases at the disposal of the United States. Italian comment also
continued to link President Clinton's gung-ho policy toward Iraq with his
Monica Lewsinky problem. In a front-page opinion piece Sunday titled "The Spectre of Vietnam,"
La Repubblica U.S. bureau chief Vittorio Zucconi wrote that despite the
instinctive patriotic solidarity that would accompany the president into
battle, "the United States isn't marching into war against Saddam; it is being
dragged."
Although
it was a coincidence that on the very day the last B-52s arrived in the Gulf,
Lewinsky returned to Washington to "launch her bombs against Clinton," the
president knew the risks involved. "The citizens of this great power are ready
to die at any time for Berlin, Iwo Jima, Seoul, Hanoi, or Baghdad," Zucconi
wrote. "But no first lady and no stock exchange index could ever save a
president suspected of having sent his soldiers to die for Monica." A new
Russian book of verses titled Hail Saddam! was the subject of a report
from Moscow in Milan's Corriere della Sera, which quoted from several of the poems
extolling the Iraqi tyrant. The "pearl of the book," it said, was a poem by
Evgene Nefedov finding the proof of Saddam's virtue in his physical resemblance
to Stalin.
The Guardian of London led with a report by its Dublin
correspondent that "President Clinton is understood to want Sinn Fein back in
the multi-party negotiations on Northern Ireland's future before the St.
Patrick's Day celebrations at the White House." Sinn Fein was suspended from
the talks Monday after the IRA was implicated in sectarian murders last week.
The suspension was generally condoned in the Irish press, but the Irish Times dwelt in an
editorial Monday on a new report showing that mortality
rates among Irish-born people in Britain "exceed those of all residents of
England and Wales by some 30 per cent for men and 20 per cent for women" and
that "Irish people there have the highest rates of mental hospitalisation and
were more than twice as likely as the native-born to be hospitalised for ...
schizophrenia, depression, neuroses, and personality disorders."
With Prime Minister Tony
Blair being reported in every British newspaper as condemning the Princess
Diana memorabilia industry as "inappropriate and tacky," and in the
Sunday Telegraph as warning "Mohammed Fayed to stop talking about [her
death] and her relationship with his son Dodi" for the sake of her children,
one of the two American authors of the new book, Death of a Princess ,
denied being part of the tackiness. Thomas Sancton, Paris bureau chief of
Time magazine, told the Daily Telegraph , "What is tacky is the
amplification given to this book on Fleet Street, particularly by the
tabloids." Sancton, who admitted to having relied heavily on Fayed and members
of his entourage for his material, said he had made no attempt to contact the
princess's family because he believed they would not respond. One of the
princess's close friends, Rosa Monckton, London president of Tiffany and Co.
and wife of Dominic Lawson, editor of the Sunday Telegraph , wrote in her
husband's newspaper that Fayed's claim that Dodi and Diana were to marry was
quite untrue. Diana had said two days before her death: "The last thing I need
is a new marriage. I need it like [I need] a bad rash in my face."
