Newts and Parrots
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France's most influential
newspaper, Le Monde,
launched a ferocious attack Thursday against Newt Gingrich for sabotaging the
Middle East peace process in defiance of his own country's foreign policy.
During his recent visit to Israel, Gingrich had made it crystal clear that he
sought to align the United States unconditionally with one camp--"not that of
Israel but that of the Israeli far right," the paper said in an editorial. His
only message had been that "whatever he does, [Prime Minister Benjamin]
Netanyahu will always have the backing of the Congress of the United
States."
Thanks to
Gingrich, Netanyahu "is himself a player in Washington's power games,
participating in the definition of American Middle East policy," Le
Monde said. It described Gingrich's exploitation of his domestic political
power to make his own foreign policy as "an unprecedented, unhealthy and
dangerous situation," and added that by fighting against his country's
diplomacy, he had "forfeited the right to be considered a statesman." "If he
should one day take his chance in a presidential election, it should be
remembered that he tried--and, alas, with partial success--to align American
Middle East policy with the positions of an ultranationalist Israeli
party."
There was another attack on Gingrich in the liberal
Guardian of London,
which linked him with the recalcitrant Northern Irish Protestant leader, the
Rev. Ian Paisley, because both are "distinguished members of the international
loony tendency." In the last few days they have "tightened the noose of
ridicule around themselves completely unaided"--Paisley by calling Britain's
Queen Elizabeth her government's "parrot" for welcoming the Northern Ireland
settlement, and Gingrich by calling Madeleine Albright "the agent for the
Palestinians" in the Middle East peace negotiations. But at least, said the
Guardian , Gingrich has refrained from taking the parrot's name in vain.
Parrots might repeat what other people say, it explained, but "Mr. Paisley, Mr.
Gingrich, and other mega-bores of the ultra-right merely repeat themselves,
again and again and again."
Gingrich
was favorably mentioned, however, by the Times of India as a supporter of India's right to conduct
its own nuclear tests. In an editorial Thursday attacking America's intimacy
with China, the newspaper said "President Bill Clinton's biggest problem today
is that he cannot keep his private connections private--whether these be of the
more personal Monica Lewinsky variety or the scandals breaking out on the
foreign affairs front." It said that his "soft policy" toward China was
continuing "despite Beijing's repeated violations of international treaties on
transfer of nuclear and missile technology to countries like Pakistan and
Iran." That was probably why "the initial rush of condemnation of India's
recent nuclear tests has been followed by a chorus of voices in Washington in
support of New Delhi's actions." (The editorial was written before Thursday's
news of Pakistan's nuclear tests.)
An op-ed article in the Financial Times of London said that
"Chinagate" could turn into "the most serious domestic scandal to hit Bill
Clinton, US President, so far" and could seriously damage the forthcoming
summit in Beijing "that the White House believes is vital to US-China
relations." The FT 's main editorial Thursday was about the financial
crisis in Russia, saying that a devaluation of the ruble should be avoided if
at all possible and that "the IMF could use this crisis as an opportunity to
impose stricter conditionality on Russia and to demand greater involvement in
its attempts to reform its public finances."
The
Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta said, "Russia is begging for money" and
quoted a source in the Kremlin as saying that President Boris Yeltsin might
visit Germany on June 8 or 9 and ask for a loan of several billion German
marks. The paper said that if the International Monetary Fund and World Bank
credits Russia was seeking were not obtained, the government would have no
other option but to devalue the ruble and set the new rate somewhere between 7
and 8 rubles to the U.S. dollar. It added that the best scenario for Russia
would be to get credits and conduct a devaluation at the same time.
After the Japanese media had almost ignored the protests
against Emperor Akihito on the first day of his state visit to Britain, Japan's
largest newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, expressed understanding Thursday of the grievances
of the British ex-prisoners-of-war who turned their backs on the emperor during
his public appearances. In an editorial, the paper blamed Japan for the ill
feeling it continued to generate in the countries it fought in World War
II.
"For many
years after the war, the government and people of Japan made no real effort to
understand the wrenching experience of war and the anguish of those in other
countries," it said. "That is the main reason the problems linger." Asahi
Shimbun added that if Japan had tried to resolve these problems a little at
a time, "those who felt themselves victimized by Japan might have felt at least
somewhat mollified"; but that "with the passing of time while we do nothing,
however, discontent and ill will can coalesce into bitter enmity."
Areport from Phnom Penh in the South China Morning Post quoted the
Cambodian Ministry of Health as saying that traffic accidents now outstripped
land mine and other war-related injuries as a major cause of death in Cambodia.
Injuries in traffic accidents had doubled between 1996 and 1997. "One of the
main problems is that Cambodians do not know how to drive," a Transport
Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying.
