Dirty Linen
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A leaked report in the
New York Times this week
that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had secretly agreed with President
Clinton to accept a consignment of highly radioactive weapons-grade material
from the former Soviet republic of Georgia for reprocessing at the Dounreay
plant in Scotland created heavy fallout in the British press on Thursday.
Blair, who was forced to confirm the deal Wednesday, denied accusations of
secretiveness, but editorials Thursday were predominantly critical of him.
While most newspapers accepted the need for Britain to play its part in taking
in eastern Europe's dirty nuclear washing, they argued that this particular
matter had been badly handled.
The
conservative tabloid Daily Mail said that "the fact that the New York
Times broke the story, rather than the British government, is a public
relations disaster for Labour" and "an uncovenanted gift for the Scottish
Nationalists," who seek independence for Scotland. While there was "a
respectable case for Britain doing its bit to stop surplus nuclear bomb kits
being sold off by gangsters from the former Soviet Union," the Daily
Mail said, "the Prime Minister would have done better to trust the people
with the truth in good time before this controversial assignment was due to
arrive."
The same view was expressed in the left-leaning Independent in an editorial headed "But they should have told us." The Daily
Telegraph said
that while it was "obviously right" that radioactive uranium from Georgia
should end up at Dounreay rather than be "made into nuclear weapons in Iraq or
Iran," Blair "should have allowed Parliament and the public to consider the
issues involved before, rather than after, the event." Only Rupert Murdoch's
Times of London was
totally supportive of Blair, saying that he had nothing to be ashamed of and
that even the charge of excessive secrecy had about it "an aura of manufactured
outrage."
After the
rows in recent weeks over the Times ' alleged failure to report stories
that might in any way distress its proprietor, the paper gave full coverage
Wednesday to the separation of Murdoch from his wife, Anna, after 30 years of
marriage. Its rival, the liberal Guardian, claimed in a front-page headline that "Murdoch marriage
break-up shakes media industry," because of its possible future effects on the
leadership of News Corp. The Times led its front page Thursday with the
headline "Mystery over where Linda McCartney really died," following reports
that she had died in Tucson, Ariz., and not in Santa Barbara, Calif., as the
family had originally stated. Newspapers around Europe attacked France over the
ticketing arrangements for this year's soccer World Cup. When a telephone hot
line was set up in Paris Wednesday, only 60 operators were employed to receive
millions of calls--15 million in one day from Britain alone.
As articles to mark the 50 th
anniversary of Israel proliferated around the world, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz led its
front page Thursday with the news that the event would be celebrated by a 10
percent reduction of the jail terms of all prisoners who had already served
more than 60 percent of their sentences. In the International Herald Tribune, the Australian Foreign
Minister, Alexander Downer, appealed Thursday for the establishment of a
permanent International Criminal Court to try those accused of crimes against
humanity. He said that the diplomatic conference to be held in Rome in June and
July this year offered "an unprecedented opportunity to establish a court with
real teeth" and that "the ghost of Pol Pot should be a reminder [to the
delegations] of the importance of their work."
In
Algeria, the French-language daily El Watan recently splashed on its front page the news that "The
populations of eastern Morocco desert their villages. Panic in Oujda." The
paper said an armed Islamic group in the Moroccan border town of Oujda had
murdered about 10 peasants, and commented that "the appearance of Islamic
terrorism in Morocco constitutes a grave danger for the stability of the
Maghreb region." In Paris, Le
Monde reported that the Moroccan government had not commented officially on
these reports, though a source in the interior ministry had described them as
"fantasies." Le Monde led its front page Thursday with an agreement that would lead to
New Caledonia's complete independence from France within 15 to 20 years.
In an editorial titled "Opening to Islam," La Repubblica of Rome praised
what it dubbed "the Prodi doctrine"--Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi's call
this week for intense dialogue with the Muslim world, including "rogue states"
like Libya and Iraq, to avert the threat of a conflict between Islam and the
West in the next millennium. In this he was profoundly at odds with the United
States, the paper said. On its front page La Repubblica reported a
warning Wednesday by Pope John Paul II that it was futile to try to predict the
timing of the end of the world. It would end, he said, but Christ had not
indicated when.
The Irish Independent of Dublin
reported Thursday that the film Titanic had taken in about
$11.5 million at the Irish box office over the past three months, making it by
far the biggest-earning film in Irish history. The previous record holder,
Michael Collins , took in about $5 million less.
