Stairway to Paradise
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As is always the case in
countries about to receive a visit from the president of the United States, the
Chilean press was obsessed with the preparations for Bill Clinton's arrival
there Thursday. The daily La
Tercera led Wednesday with a scoop--the text of a "secret memo" from the
management of the Hotel Hyatt about security arrangements. While the Clintons
were in residence on the 19 th floor of the hotel, the elevator would
go no higher than the 18 th floor, the memo said. Only 11 people
would be authorized to proceed beyond this point up the emergency staircase to
the presidential suite. They were listed as five waiters working
round-the-clock shifts, and "Sr. Leins, Sr. Fischer, Sr. Flegal, Srta.
Sanguinetti, Sr. Piña, and Sr. Wallace."
The
newspaper did not attempt to explain who these people were or why they would be
tripping up and down the stairs to the president's suite. Those curious about
the alluringly named Señorita Sanguinetti were also left unsatisfied. Anyone
wanting to speak to the president should dial 50060002, the memo added. The
U.S. delegation would be sleeping in 265 of the hotel's 310 rooms, with the
remaining rooms being converted into temporary offices. There would be 23 bars
open during the president's stay. "Paradoxical though it may seem," said La
Tercera , a list of instructions to hotel staff included one printed in bold
capitals that it was "forbidden to give any kind of information to
anybody."
Meanwhile, El Mercurio predicted President Clinton would make a point of
praising Chile for choosing to move toward democracy. It also predicted he
would put heavy pressure on Chilean President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle to
purchase American F-16 or F-18 fighters, rather than European planes, for its
air force. Interviewed by El Mercurio , U.S. Ambassador to Chile Gabriel
Guerra Mondragón faced persistent questioning about Clinton's attitude to
former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet's continued membership of the
Senate, which Clinton will address Friday. The ambassador said it was entirely
up to Pinochet to attend or not; the president will make his speech in any
event. Thursday, both El Mercurio and La Tercera published
enthusiastic editorials on the significance of the second Summit of the
Americas, which Clinton will convene immediately following this two-day state
visit.
Reports,
which have since been confirmed, of the death from a heart attack of ousted
former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot dominated many Asian newspapers Thursday. The
South China Morning Post led
its front page with the news that his body had been shown to Western
journalists by his Khmer Rouge guards on Cambodia's border with Thailand. But
the Friday edition of Australia's Sydney Morning Herald carried a report from its Bangkok correspondent saying there was still no
conclusive proof that this corpse was really Pol Pot's. It also ran a feature
describing the Khmer Rouge, "with its last few hundred guerrillas on the run,"
as "a mere shadow of the fearsome army which once subjected the entire country
to unbridled terror."
The Straits Times of Singapore led on a
prediction by World Bank Chief James Wolfensohn, made in an interview with the
International
Herald
Tribune , that as many as 20 million
more Indonesians may be forced into poverty by their country's economic crisis
and remain desperately poor for years to come. In India, the Asian Age led Wednesday with a
report claiming Clinton "shares India's concern over cross-border terrorism
from Pakistan," while the Pioneer reported the Pentagon was considering new
sanctions against Pakistan after its recent test-firing of a homemade
surface-to-surface missile. But Dawn, Pakistan's principal English-language newspaper, led from Washington
Thursday with a claim that the State Department had "discounted" any "fresh
sanctions." Dawn also ran a feature deploring the escalating arms race
between India and Pakistan.
France's
Le Monde Thursday ran one
front-page story--titled "United States: Sex Rehabilitated"--about former Sen.
Bob Packwood's plans for a political comeback; another about an irate Boris
Yeltsin threatening to exile from Russia his close friend and oil tycoon Boris
Berezovski "if he did not immediately stop his intrigues"; and yet another
about the Vatican's condemnation of John Carpenter's film Vampires . The
front page of La
Repubblica in Rome reported a campaign by the unreformed Italian Communist
Party to stop Italian sportsmen from wearing clothes with the Nike logo on
them.
In Madrid, El País gave front-page prominence to an order by the Ukrainian
president for a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl to be reopened May 5. In London,
the Times led with the news that gay sex at 16 was likely to be made
legal in Britain by the summer, while the Guardian led on
an opinion poll jointly sponsored by it and the Irish Times showing
overwhelming support in Ireland, north and south, for the Ulster peace deal,
despite its rejection by large sections of the Protestant leadership in the
north.
Asked how they would vote in
next month's referenda, 73 percent of Ulster electors said they would support the negotiated settlement and 61 percent
of voters in the republic said the same. The Irish Independent of Dublin
said it came as a "surprise" that support for the deal is smaller
in the south than in the north. It said this possibly reflected concerns about
a planned amendment to the Irish Constitution that would make Irish
reunification contingent on majority consent in Ulster.
