In Ghana, where President
Clinton stopped Monday at the start of his six nation African tour, the
Daily
Graphic called this maiden visit to the country by a U.S. president "a
victory for all Ghanaians, irrespective of political belief and social status
or other criteria." Urging "all our people to take active and positive part in
welcoming our august visitor," it boasted that the Clinton administration had
acknowledged the country's "remarkable achievements" in embracing democracy and
free market economics.
In
Nigeria, shunned by Clinton because of its military dictatorship and human
rights record, the independent daily Post Express, which opposes the dictatorship, reported an
attack on the United States by a special adviser to head of state Gen. Sani
Abacha. In his statement titled "No to Coercive Democracy," Alhaji Wada Nas
condemned Susan Rice, U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs,
for saying the United States would not accept the emergence of any military
official as Nigerian president in forthcoming elections. He said that if Abacha
were to contest the elections, "he would not be violating any known Nigerian
law or international norm." Nigeria, he said, "needs no country to rewrite its
laws or disenfranchise its military men as second class citizens." In an
editorial welcoming Pope John Paul II to Nigeria, the Post
Express urged the pontiff "to plead the cause of political and other
detainees," which he duly did.
In Uganda, the U.S. president's second stop, the daily
New Vision reported
on a government news conference before the visit, at which the Ugandan Minister
for Presidential Affairs Amama Mbabazi was asked if opposition leaders would
meet Clinton. "Not likely," the minister replied. "They did not contact us." In
South Africa, the Johannesburg Star told Clinton in an editorial Monday that he would be
confronted in Uganda with "a bizarre no-party system of government that outlaws
political activities and stifles human rights." It added, "Although the US was
the first Western country to criticise the system, warning of far-reaching
regional and international consequences, the warmth demonstrated by Washington
over the past few years shows considerable tolerance."
In London,
the Financial Times ran an
editorial urging Clinton to offer "greater US support for the World Bank-led
initiative to reduce the debt of the poorest countries, and backing for African
governments' plans to put the money into health and education." But it also
urged him to do "some frank talking" to African leaders about reducing
bureaucracy, curbing corruption, and expanding privatization. In Paris,
Le Monde devoted a full
page Sunday to background on the president's African tour, with an article from
Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on weak U.S. investment--compared with French, Japanese,
British, and Swiss investment--in West Africa. It said the limited U.S.
presence "is explained above all by ignorance" (U.S. businessmen
assume--wrongly--that all countries in the region are as uninhabitable as
Nigeria). La Stampa of
Turin, Italy, gave the president's African tour one paragraph on Page 9 under
the headline "Clinton in Africa to forget Sexygate."
The French press was dominated by the political
pact between part of the country's respectable political right and the racist
National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, which could make Le Pen president of
Southern France's largest region, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. This was deplored
in Le
Monde and Libération but even more strongly in the liberal press in
Britain, where the Sunday Observer called it "a pact with the Devil" and a "grave danger to
democracy." In similar vein, the Independent said,
"It is a decision of great moment not just for France but for the whole of
Europe because whatever they decide, the situation is a warning of the sinister
forces which stand ready to exploit arrogant, bureaucratic and remote European
institutions in bad economic times."
Dublin's Sunday
Independent published
a full-page farewell profile of U.S. Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, who has
announced she will retire in July at age 70. Under the headline "A very Irish
ambassador," the newspaper said that, despite her hotline to the White House
and her friendship with the leaders of Sinn Fein, she had not been central to
the launching of the peace process in Northern Ireland but had been used "to
take the flak," while Clinton, Anthony Lake, Nancy Soderberg, and Ulster Social
Democrat leader John Hume "worked away quietly" behind the scenes. "She was
always something of a loose cannon, not much given to bureaucratic niceties or
diplomatic protocols," the newspaper added.
On their front pages, the
Daily Telegraph of London and La Repubblica of Rome reported respectively that the
nightingale in Britain and the swallow in Italy are heading toward extinction.
El País of Madrid, Spain,
called for U.N.-style international intervention in natural disasters such as
the Amazon forest fires. Le
Figaro of Paris highlighted the world's growing water crisis, saying the
number of people without enough water to drink will rise from the current 1.5
billion to 2 billion in the year 2050. It reported French President Jacques
Chirac's proposal at a UNESCO conference in Paris for the establishment of an
international water academy.
