Oslo Moves to London
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Under the headline "UK to host May
peace parley," the conservative Jerusalem Post splashed the news Monday that there would
definitely be a new round of Middle East peace talks in London next month,
hosted by British prime minister Tony Blair and attended by Benjamin Netanyahu,
Yasser Arafat, and Madeleine Albright. The Post attributed this
information to a "senior diplomatic source." But the prestigious Israeli daily
Ha'aretz was
much more
cautious, with a front-page headline saying only that "Blair makes some
headway in brokering peace get-together." While several of the main British
newspapers led Monday with the possibility of a London meeting, none of them
took it as a done deal. The conservative Daily Telegraph said in an
editorial that while Blair might have a useful role in preparing the ground for
a new U.S. diplomatic effort, "anything more ambitious is pure
presumption."
Although Blair was described
in the headline of a Jerusalem
Post editorial as
a "most welcome visitor" to Israel, the paper said the idea "that the Stormont
wizard can perform another miracle in the Holy Land is nice, but somewhat
unreal." He might, however, be "the right person to talk bluntly to Arafat
about terrorism," the Post said. "If he were to do so, and communicate
this message to the Israeli public, he would justify his newly-acquired
prominence in world politics and facilitate a useful European participation in
the peace process." In another editorial marking the arrival in Israel of U.S.
Defense Secretary William Cohen, the Jerusalem
Post urged
President Clinton to follow the example of "gutsy" King Hussein of Jordan and
meet with Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of Iraq's democratic opposition. The
Post said it was "difficult to fathom why the US seems slavishly
attached to a policy [toward Iraq], built upon 'containment' and UN
inspections, that is doomed to failure," when it should be supporting this
"viable democratic alternative to Saddam" as "a strategic and moral
imperative."
An
op-ed
piece in Ha'aretz by Sharon Sadeh said Blair "might well serve as an
efficient channel for the conduct of secret talks, particularly with the
Palestinians and the Syrians, who view Britain as a fairer and more balanced
intermediary than the United States." But it is unlikely Blair can restore
Israel's confidence in a British role in the peace process, Shadeh said,
because he is a prisoner of the anti-Israeli British Foreign Office. The
main
editorial in Ha'aretz concerned an international campaign to obtain
the early release of Israel's Mordechai Vanunu, who was kidnapped by Mossad in
Italy 12 years ago, taken back to Israel, and given an 18-year prison sentence
for having revealed his country's nuclear secrets. The paper said Israel could
not "act permissively toward those who are entrusted with its deepest secrets
and then decide to breach their commitment," but it deplored the fact that
Vanunu has been held in strict solitary confinement for the past 12 years on
the insistence of Israeli security services. "The impression is that the
security masters were not content with Vanunu's punishment and sought in
addition to drive him insane," the paper said.
In Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post ran an editorial congratulating Clinton
for his role in China's decision to send Tiananmen Square hero Wang Dan into
exile in the United States. It described this as a victory for Clinton's change
of policy a few years ago, when he decided to engage in dialogue with the
Chinese government over human rights rather than link the issue to Most Favored
Nation trading status. The paper said it was now clear "Beijing is moving in
the right direction." It added that the human rights situation is likely to go
on improving under new Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, who sees it as "an
embarrassing legacy from a less open past which sits ill with his determined
policy of engaging China with the world."
But in a
news report, the SCMP quoted several Hong Kong opposition leaders as
attacking China for using Wang Dan as a pawn in Sino-American relations. Hong
Kong dissident Han Dongfang said exile was used by China as an effective way to
eliminate internal dissent. In continuing heavy coverage of the death of Pol
Pot and its aftermath, the SCMP revealed that the widow of this man who
had crushed all religions and murdered thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns had
held a private Buddhist ceremony in front of his corpse one hour before his
cremation. It also claimed that Thai soldiers who removed locks of hair from
his head had been acting at the request of the U.S. government.
In Rome, La Repubblica disclosed on its front page that Pope John
Paul II is secretly completing a new encyclical for the third millennium. It
said the encyclical, the 13 th of his pontificate, will set out the
church's thinking on the future of mankind, expressing fears about modern
materialism and urging people to look into the real meaning of life. The same
newspaper reported that among 30,000 people who visited the Turin Shroud in the
cathedral in that north Italian city Sunday was the American tennis star André
Agassi, who arrived there from Monte Carlo in a pale blue Rolls Royce,
declaring himself to be "a deep believer."
Le Monde of Paris ran a
front-page feature titled "Bill Clinton, the 'Teflon President,' " attempting
to explain why the president remains so popular despite all the bimbo
eruptions. It said he was benefiting not only from a national "state of
euphoria" about peace and the economy but also from the fact that "Americans
are more European than is generally believed in their reactions to sexual
matters." In another front-page piece, Le Monde reported that Brigitte
Bardot has joined the ranks of Serb nationalist supporters in France who deny
the crimes committed by the Bosnian Serbs and portray them as victims of "a
vast American-German-Vatican-Islamic coalition." In an interview published in a
new pro-Serb tract, "Allies of the Serbs," the former sex kitten turned animal
liberationist said she supports the Serbs against the Muslims because the
latter "are overrunning the world, and their animal slaughter practices are an
abomination against which I fight every day." Bardot added she hopes one day to
visit Serbia, "simply, without tralala." The death Sunday of another animal
liberationist, Linda McCartney, who even created a vegetarian dog food line,
was massively reported in papers all around the world.
