Jordan's Hussein Faces the End
With Israeli papers all
leading Thursday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's threatened walkout
from the Wye Plantation talks and the desperate American efforts to keep them
going, the Jerusalem
Post reported from London that King Hussein of Jordan has "no more
than three months to live." Quoting "a Jordanian medical source," the paper
said that the king, who has been receiving treatment for lymphatic cancer at
the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and has become involved in the Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations, might return to Jordan earlier than scheduled (he is due back
Nov. 28) because "he wants to be in his beloved country and with his people in
his last days." It added that this prognosis about the king's health had
reached both the CIA and the Israeli intelligence services.
Quoting
the newsletter Foreign Report , due to be published Thursday, the
Jerusalem Post said that "Jordan after Hussein" was the main topic of
discussion between Netanyahu and CIA Director George Tenet when Tenet visited
Israel last week. It said there is anxiety in Jordan at the prospect of the
king being succeeded by his brother, Crown Prince Hassan, who is regarded as
"snobbish and loquacious by his critics, who say his sentences are often so
long that by the time they end, the listener or reader has forgotten how they
started."
In an editorial Thursday, the Jerusalem Post called
for the adoption of the "Birthright" initiative, proposed by Knesset member
Yossi Beilin, under which every American Jewish boy or girl would, on turning
17, be given an all-expenses-paid, three-week trip to Israel. This is because,
"[o]ver the past 50 years, identification with Israel has been a major
component of Jewish identity in the Diaspora in general, and in North America
in particular. ... Restoring Israel's place in the collective Jewish
consciousness should be a top priority of every [Jewish] federation on the
North American continent."
In Paris
Thursday, Le Monde ran an
editorial about the treason trial in St. Petersburg, Russia, of former
submarine Capt. Alexander Nikitin for passing information to Norway about
nuclear radiation levels in the Arctic region. The French newspaper described
the trial as worthy of "the good old Soviet times" and said that, because of
it, Russia should be suspended from the Council of Europe, the club of
democratic European nations to which it was admitted in 1996. It said the case
recalls "the most sinister practices of the Soviet Union" because Nikitin has
suffered intimidation, police harassment, and many other abuses instead of
being decorated by the Russian state for sounding the alarm about dangerous
radiation levels. "His fate ought to disturb all the capitals of the West."
The nomination of Italy's 55 th
post-fascist government, headed for the first time by an ex-Communist, Massimo
d'Alema, led several European newspapers Thursday, with great emphasis on the
fact that six of the 25 new Cabinet ministers are women. In a front-page
editorial, La Stampa of
Turin described it as a well-balanced government born to last, "a clever mix of
old and new," but added that the political compromises it embodies will slow
down decision-making and might "prolong to infinity the already interminable
period of Italian transition."
In
another front-page editorial, La Stampa criticized the new German
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for canceling the Nov. 8 commemoration in France of
World War I. The paper said it is understandable that Schröder's generation
should want to lift from itself blame that doesn't belong to it. But it added
that Germany remains exposed to "the perpetual and human temptation of
nationalism" and has a duty to join in the commemoration.
In London, the Times led its front page with a call by Margaret Thatcher
for the immediate release of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who is under arrest in a
London clinic. In a letter to the paper from the United States, where she is on
a lecture tour, the former British prime minister said Pinochet helped shorten
the 1982 Falklands War by supporting Britain and saved many British lives as a
result. In an editorial, the Times supported her stance.
Following the blocking by the
religious right of the appointment of James Hormel to Luxembourg as America's
first openly gay ambassador, the liberal Guardian of London surveyed a group of foreign countries
to establish their attitudes toward gay diplomats. A spokesman for the Irish
government said, "We don't inquire"; diplomats from the Netherlands and Sweden,
which recognize same-sex partnerships as equal to marriages, said discretion is
used when posting gay officials to sexually conservative countries; and a
Swedish embassy spokesman said the country has "two or three" gay ambassadors
abroad.
But a Zimbabwean spokesman
pointed out that in Zimbabwe, "sodomy is an offence." He noted, "If the
ambassador has been appointed, if we have any information that he is gay, we
can't discriminate against him. But once he starts practising, he has committed
an offence."
