U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan told Milan's Corriere della Sera Sunday that he knew he was close to an
agreement with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad when the Iraqi leader asked him if he
could leave the room for a few moments to pray ("I knew that the pope was also
praying for peace, and with such support, how could I fail?"). Annan said he
believes the agreement will hold because--as has never happened before--it was
negotiated in person by Saddam; he also said Bill Clinton had shown "a great
capacity for leadership" in the Iraqi crisis by uniting diplomacy with a show
of force.
Other
Italian Sunday newspapers led on the protest march in Rome Saturday by 15,000
people with white sheets over their heads demanding access to a new cancer
treatment that the Italian government has been trying to suppress pending the
outcome of clinical trials. The marchers barracked the office of Prime Minister
Romano Prodi, who refused to come out because he was with U.S. Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright, who reportedly was ticking him off for not being
tough enough on the Serbs on the Kosovo issue (see
Slate
's
"The Week/The Spin"
for more on the situation in Kosovo). The cocktail of untested cancer drugs
prescribed by Professor Luigi di Bella of Modena has aroused huge popular
enthusiasm in Italy--a fact attributed by Eugenio Scalfari, founding editor of
La Repubblica of Rome,
to the Italian people's unique faith in miracles.
One miracle in which Italians don't believe, however, is
that men will change their ways. An opinion poll published over the weekend
showed that 71 percent of Italian women support the legalization of brothels.
In an editorial Sunday, La Repubblica called for open discussion of the
prostitution problem and did its bit for the cause the next day by devoting two
richly illustrated pages to the subject. Also Sunday, La Repubblica ran
an editorial supporting President Clinton's anti-smoking crusade, which it said
had replaced Iraq as the chief diversion from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The
paper expressed surprise that Clinton's attacks on smoking were treated as
remote and irrelevant in Europe--especially in Italy--when tobacco was in fact
the biggest killer in most countries of the world. "We import from the States
so many useless fashions, horrible films, and suspect religions," it said. "So
why can't we pay more attention to a war that, in this instance, actually is
'just'?"
The other
big Italian news story over the weekend was the life sentences imposed by the
Italian military court of appeals on 84-year-old former Nazi Erich Priebke and
his SS henchman Karl Hass for the massacre of 335 civilians at the Fosse
Ardeatine caves outside Rome in March 1944. La Repubblica welcomed the
sentences for "conciliating the law of men with that of memory and conscience"
but reported Monday that they had divided Italian Jews. Leaders of the Roman
Jewish community, the largest and oldest in the country, formally dissociated
themselves from the president of "the Italian Israelitic Communities," Tullia
Zevi, who had called for clemency saying that "nobody wants an 80-year-old to
end his days in prison."
On the same day the British Sunday
Telegraph led with the news that the World Health
Organization, recently accused of suppressing a report showing that cannabis
isn't as dangerous as tobacco or alcohol, had now suppressed "a study which
shows ... not only [that] there might be no link between passive smoking and
lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect." The next day the
liberal Guardian
claimed in its front page lead story that this was nonsense put out by the
British American Tobacco Co. It said BAT had deliberately drawn the wrong
conclusions from the study, which had not been held up by WHO but had been
submitted to the journal of the National Cancer Institute in the United
States.
The
Times and the
Daily
Telegraph of London both led Monday with stories about
plans for the downgrading of the British royal family in response to pressure
for constitutional reform--the Times saying that Prince William would
lose his seat in the House of Lords and the Telegraph that minor royals
would lose their police escorts. The queen had already been reported in British
newspapers as preparing to 1) end bowing and curtsying and 2) cut down on the
number of "royal highnesses" in her family. The French press led mainly on the
implication of former Foreign Minister Roland Dumas (now president of the
Constitutional Council) in an alleged corruption scandal that has to do with
the sale of French frigates to Taiwan. The German press focused on the German
Green Party, whose radicalization might make a political alliance with moderate
Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder that much harder. (Schröder is challenging
Helmut Kohl for the chancellorship in September's election.) This was seen as
giving Kohl a better chance of victory.
The liberal Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz said in a
gloomy editorial Monday that there was "a chilling sense these
days of sights and sounds from the period of impervious apathy which preceded
the 1973 war." It accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of achieving
nothing during his four-nation European tour. "The four-point plan which he
hurriedly submitted yesterday to the prime minister of Britain only recycles
his futile proposals," Ha'aretz said. The conservative Jerusalem Post led on
Netanyahu's rejection of Tony Blair's request for a halt in West Bank
settlement activity. In an editorial,
it urged the United States to back Netanyahu's proposal for a summit with
Yasser Arafat, who, it claimed, was now responsible for the stalemate in the
peace process.
In Saudi
Arabia, Asharq Al-Awsat said Arab countries were facing a very grave
crisis with unforeseeable consequences because of the fall in the price of oil.
This would be "a very difficult year for the economies of all Arab countries,"
it said, adding, "The risk is a repeat of the scenario of the second half of
the 1980s, which, in the case of Algeria, resulted in a bloody and unstoppable
civil war."
The St. Petersburg
Times of Russia reported plans by left-wing groups to disrupt the planned summer
burial of the remains--of Czar Nicholas II; his wife, Alexandra; three of their
five children; and four of their servants--discovered near Yekaterinburg in
1991. Despite continuing argument about the authenticity of the remains, the
government had made "a final decision" to have a state funeral (complete with a
military guard saluting the cortege along its route) in St. Petersburg July 17.
While the federal government will foot most of the bill for the funeral, "the
city will have to cover costs for paving roads and painting houses," the
newspaper said.
