Chamber of Horrors
Most
British newspapers led Friday with the discovery of a "medieval torture
chamber" beneath a Serb police station in Pristina and on an official British
estimate that more than 10,000 ethnic Albanians died in Serb atrocities. The
Guardian
carried front-page photographs of some of the instruments of torture found
inside the police interrogation center--knuckle-dusters, knives, a hangman's
noose, and a chainsaw. Although, according to local Albanians, the Serbs spent
three days burning documents before the British arrived, the Guardian
quoted an official of the Hague war crimes tribunal as saying that scraps of
paper left behind might be useful in establishing a "paper chain" between
President Slobodan Milosevic and the massacres carried out in Kosovo. "There is
correspondence going between here and Belgrade about numbers of 'terrorist
suspects' picked up," the official said. "It tells us a lot about how much
Belgrade knew was going on." The discovery prompted a hard-line editorial in
the Times of London calling on NATO to stand firm against any deviations
from the Kosovo peace deal. It asked in particular for rejection of a request
by some Kosovo-born Serb policemen to be allowed to discard their uniforms and
return to civilian life in the province. "To backpedal in any way would result
in more demands from all sides for more renegotiation, put the deal as a whole
in jeopardy, and must not be countenanced," it said.
In
Paris Friday, Le
Monde strongly attacked French Interior Minister Jean-Pierre
Chevènement for his apparent indifference to the sufferings of the Albanian
Kosovars. It described as "shocking" the minister's public declaration of
concern about what might now happen to the Serbs in Kosovo "without a word
about the violence and deportations endured for long weeks by the Kosovars,
without a thought for the victims of the massacres carried out by the Serbs."
Le Monde 's editorial also deplored the timing of the minister's
statement, coming just as NATO is discovering that its worst fears about Serb
atrocities were justified and that the accounts by Kosovar refugees were not
exaggerated.
The
Independent
reported the reappearance of Veton Surroi, the publisher of the
Kosovo Albanian daily Koha Ditore , which had its offices and printing
plant destroyed by the Serbs during the war but which started publishing again
in exile in Macedonia. The Independent , which described Surroi as a
possible future leader of the province, said it reached him by telephone and
was told that he is fine and will soon be coming out of hiding. The
Guardian ran an article by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev about
the environmental consequences of the Kosovo air campaign. Writing in his
capacity as president of Green Cross International, a nongovernmental
environmental organization, Gorbachev called for a ban on weapons containing
depleted uranium such as NATO used in Yugoslavia. Although their external
radiation levels are quite low, he said, "the internal radiation source damages
various types of cells in the human body, destroys chromosomes and affects the
reproductive system." Gorbachev also wants the bombing of nuclear power
stations and of some chemical and petrochemical plants to be prohibited by
international law. "The human drama and the drama of nature should be of equal
concern to us," he wrote.
In an
editorial on the G-8 summit in Cologne, Germany, the Times said world leaders
"should stick to the hard stuff," such as the Balkans and Third World debt
relief, rather than introduce a new topic, education--"an interloper that risks
distracting leaders from urgent matters and perverts the purpose of these
summits"--to their discussions. "The G8 should concentrate on issues that only
they can solve," it said. "Tony Blair and his fellow leaders may hope that by
endorsing this charter [for lifelong learning] they will make the summit seem
more relevant to people's lives. Yet few voters are likely to be impressed by a
wedge of motherhood and apple pie, served with a topping of Third Way
jargon."
In
Tokyo, Asahi Shimbun highlighted anticipated summit differences
between Japan and the West over the postwar reconstruction of Yugoslavia. It
said that while President Bill Clinton and French President
Jacques Chirac had agreed to deny all but humanitarian aid to Yugoslavia while
Milosevic remains in power, Japan opposes such a condition and has already
pledged $200 million toward reconstruction.
In
Germany, both Die
Welt and Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung led Friday on a clash over abortion between Pope
John Paul II and the German Roman Catholic bishops. Under German law, women get
free abortions within the first three months of pregnancy, provided they have
first discussed their situations with a group of consultants comprising social
workers, psychologists, doctors, and representatives of the churches. Of the
1,700 such groups, 270 are organized by the Catholic Church. But in an
"outspoken" letter to the German Bishops' Conference, the gist of which was
leaked Thursday to Frankfurter Allgemeine , the pope ordered the German
church to stop participating in the state consultancy system. The paper said he
had thus put himself in opposition to about 70 percent of the bishops in
Germany.
The
scandal, originating in Belgium, of contaminated Coca-Cola continued to make
front pages around Europe Friday. In Rome, La Repubblica said this was an "annus horribilis " for Coca-Cola,
that "the sun is setting on the empire of Atlanta," and that "the gods have
turned against the fizzy drink." The company is suffering from "a credibility
crisis which could prove devastating," it said.
Le Monde 's front
page included an exposé of the famous French underwater explorer, Commander
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, as a rabid anti-Semite. It quoted a letter written by
Cousteau in 1941, when he was working for French naval intelligence in
Marseilles, complaining about the lack of decent accommodation. "There won't be
a suitable apartment until they have thrown out those vile 'youtres ' [an
abusive term for Jews] who encumber us," he wrote to a fellow naval officer.
Cousteau died two years ago this month.
