Clinton Does Africa
In Paris Sunday, Le Monde said President Clinton
would leave Africa with the message that the "new Africa" is not willing to be
bossed around. Highlighting South African President Nelson Mandela's public
criticisms of the United States, which it said were a break with "the treatment
usually reserved for the president of the world's greatest power," the
newspaper said in its editorial that Mandela had confirmed that Africa's new
leaders were not totally manipulable and controllable people. "This message
will have to be listened to by the US and by every other power," the editorial
concluded. "The 'new Africa' is not under orders; it will grow up by rejecting
tutelage."
In
Canada, the Toronto Star
praised President Clinton and Pope John Paul II for the support they had given
to African democratic reformers during their visits to the continent, but
called for a change in Western attitudes toward Africa. In an editorial Monday, it criticized Canada and the United States for
paring down foreign aid at a time when poverty was growing in the sub-Saharan
region. It said Northern markets were often closed to African goods, and
investment in Africa was frequently skewed to benefit the few at the expense of
the many. "These are attitudes and practices that must change, if we want the
peoples of Africa to regard us as partners, not hypocrites," it concluded.
The Daily Nation of Nairobi, Kenya, published a reader's letter saying that President Clinton's apology for
slavery was "too late" and "only rubs salt into wounds." It demanded
reparations, although "[n]o amount of compensation will reverse the historical
injustice by the West." Another letter in the same newspaper said Clinton
deserved "a pat on the back" for his visit to Africa, which, it explained,
ought to help "refocus world opinion, and especially that of corporate America,
on Africa as a paradise for investment."
The
independent Post
Express of Nigeria said in an editorial that the "international symbolism" of the
American presidency had never been greater than today. "If this has been the
American Century, it has never seemed more American than in its final decade.
When Clinton goes abroad, he does so as the leader of a nation unrivaled in its
prosperity, technology, military might and cultural influence. ... It will not
inoculate him from the problems that await his return to Washington, but at a
moment of peril in his administration Clinton is enjoying the radiance of the
nation he represents."
According to a report in South Africa's Cape
Times , members of the "Americans" gang in the poor Cape Town ghetto of
Hanover Park said they wished Bill Clinton had visited them last week, because
he would have seen that life in Los Angeles was "the same as life here." Their
emblem is the American flag, and they regard Clinton as the "godfather." "That
flag means a lot of sacrifice," one of them said. "It means that you are
prepared to take and carry an illegal gun. ... You must be prepared to break
your mother's heart."
The Daily Telegraph of London, in a
report from Washington by Hugo Gurdon and right-wing conspiracy theorist
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, gave front-page prominence to allegations in the Paula
Jones case that President Clinton raped nursing-home administrator Juanita
Broaddrick in a hotel room in Little Rock, Ark., when he was the state's
attorney general 20 years ago.
The paper
printed a letter Monday from exiled King Kigeli V of Rwanda, who
wrote from Falls Church, Va., that Clinton "must accept primary responsibility"
for the world's inaction in the face of the genocide in his country. Referring
to the president's promise of $30 million to help bring the guilty to trial,
the king said that this might help salve Clinton's conscience but that "my
people need, and deserve, more than this if they are to rebuild their lives,
which would not have been shattered had he acted sooner."
In Argentina, the Buenos Aires Herald
blamed the Arkansas schoolyard massacre on the proliferation of firearms in the
United States and said in an editorial that Argentine citizens were also
rapidly arming themselves as a reaction to a surging crime rate. "Yet massively
buying weapons in self-defence only leads to a dangerous escalation of
violence," it said.
United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in an interview Monday with the conservative
Paris daily Le Figaro
that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "very intelligent and young"
and understood international situations. "He is a man fully capable of
surprising us in a positive way," Annan said.
