Hillary in Florence
Hillary Clinton was the personality who most interested the Italian newspapers
at Sunday's "Third Way" summit conference in Florence, where the leaders of the
United States, Brazil, and various European countries vainly sought a common
political platform for the world's parties of the center-left. They were not
very kind about her. La
Repubblica of Rome said Monday that she failed to make a widely
anticipated speech because she has made so many gaffes lately and that her
decision to sit in on the conference as a nonparticipant resulted in a special
program for the leaders' wives being canceled "at the last moment with zero
warning and zero courtesy."
Corriere della
Sera of Milan said Clinton was upstaged by the pregnant Cherie Blair,
wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "It was to have been Hillary's
triumph, her consecration as the superstar of the first ladies, her takeoff
point for the New York seat in the United States Senate," the paper said.
"Instead, Hillary's star was obscured twice yesterday: first on the Florentine
stage by Cherie Blair, who with her pregnancy became the protagonist of the
Third Way conference, and second in the New York electoral college where a
Democratic member of the city council, Ronnie Eldridge, declared in a loud
voice what many think but have till now only murmured--that the first lady
should withdraw her candidacy."
Corriere also ran a story about visits by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton
and Madeleine Albright to a market of Italian luxury goods held in the foyer of
Florence's Excelsior Hotel. The headline was "Miss Albright cannot resist
Florentine jewels." It said the secretary of state much admired a white linen
tablecloth but rejected it on learning its price was about $2,500. She then
bought three purses and a candle before arriving at the jewelry stand. "They
gave her a discount, but the most powerful woman in the world knows how to
value the weight and the worth of things," the paper said. "Before signing for
the purchase of a choker, she weighed it against the bracelet she was wearing
on her wrist: It is three times as heavy as the choker."
On the
substance of the summit, Corriere noted in an editorial "the profoundly
different realities" of the United States and Britain on the one hand and
continental Europe on the other. The arduous search for common policies to
reconcile the "solidaristic" social values of the left-wing parties of the
continent with the rules of the free market will continue long after Florence,
the paper said. While Corriere reported President Bill Clinton urging
everyone to imitate the American model, La Repubblica highlighted a
speech by France's socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a Third Way skeptic,
in which he denounced U.S. retention of the death penalty. "We must be
irreproachable in raising the problem of human rights in developing countries
by defending them with great rigor in our own," Jospin said. "And for this I
would like to see the death penalty disappear in all democracies."
One
issue preoccupying the British press Monday was where Tony and Cherie Blair's
forthcoming baby was conceived--was it in Tuscany or in France during their
summer vacation? Fending off questions about this in an interview with La
Repubblica , Tony Blair admitted that he thought it would be a "British
baby." Fevered study of the diaries of the prime minister and his wife led most
British papers to conclude that their fourth child, due next May when Cherie
will be three months short of 46 years old, must have been conceived while the
couple were staying with Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral, her Scottish castle.
The tabloid Daily
Mirror even published a photograph Monday of the bedroom in which it
claimed the conception had taken place.
Far
the biggest story in Britain, however, was the disgrace of millionaire novelist
Lord Jeffrey Archer, who was forced to resign at the weekend as the chosen
Conservative Party candidate for mayor of London after being exposed in the Mirror for using a false alibi in a libel
action 12 years ago. Archer won about $750,000 in damages against tabloid
newspaper the Daily Star after it alleged that he had consorted with a
prostitute. Archer now faces possible criminal charges after admitting to
getting a friend to lie that they had dined together in a restaurant on one of
the evenings in question. In editorials Monday, almost all newspapers sharply
criticized Conservative Party leader William Hague for supporting Archer's
candidacy and praising his probity despite the novelist's controversial past
and warnings that he had further skeletons in his closet.
As
China's successful launch into orbit of its Shenzhou spacecraft received
saturation coverage in the state-controlled Chinese press, a Chinese military
expert told the China Business Times that the test had major military
implications. Song Yichang said that the same low-power propulsion technology
used to adjust a spacecraft's orbit in flight could also be used to alter the
path of offensive missiles, thus enabling China to overcome U.S. anti-missile
defenses.
On the 36 th
anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the National Post of Canada
ran a commentary by Corbin Andrews saying that three other men
who died on Nov. 22, 1963--C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, and French composer
Francis Poulenc--"made contributions to our century that far outweigh
Kennedy's." The writer said, "His legacy holds power only because it is
symbolic of America's lost innocence. His assassination marks the point when
the bubble burst and we finally realized there could never be a heaven on
Earth. Of course, Lewis and Huxley had been telling us that all along."
