European press review
Monday's French dailies suggest that the days of
Corsican separatism may be numbered, but warn that its more extreme elements are
all the more dangerous for that.
The German press looks at leading social-democrat
Oskar Lafontaine's threat to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and with the Olympic
Games almost upon us, papers across Europe ponder the changes since the first
modern games in 1896.
Death throes?
The weekend's meeting of Corsican and other
European separatist organisations in the Corsican town of Corte prompts the
French Le Figaro to conclude that the Corsican separatists "seem increasingly
divided".
Despite the fact that those attending "declared
their preference for a solution negotiated with the French state", the paper
notes, "negotiation is no longer on the agenda, and those who support it are
being fiercely challenged by the illegal underground groups".
Le Figaro's fellow-Parisian daily Liberation
agrees. The weekend's meeting, the paper says, "showed a Corsican nationalist
movement if not in decline, certainly up a blind alley and perhaps on the point
of splitting between 'political' and 'military' wings".
The very idea of nationalism seems to have run its course
The very idea of nationalism seems to have run its course
Le Monde
"Last March's regional elections," it adds,
"confirmed that the movement's sympathisers are a minority." Its activists "are
not many" the paper notes, "and its 'soldiers' a mere handful".
But the latter "are armed and dangerous",
Liberation warns, "and some seem about to break away from the strategy of unity,
of dialogue with Paris and of a truce in their attacks".
"Over the past ten years," the paper says, "the
Corsican nationalists have been tearing themselves apart in vendettas worse than
the clan fights against which their movement was formed." They have "allowed
their struggle to become corrupted by crime and racketeering to such an extent
that they have become their own hostages", it concludes.
Le Monde also believes that the Corte meeting
"may well have heralded the end of an era", because "militant Corsican
nationalism seems to have lost its life-force".
"It is above all the very idea of nationalism
that seems to have run its course," the paper argues." It points out that issues
which were "a novelty" 30 years ago, "such as the defence of the Corsican
language and culture and the protection of the island's coastline", are now
"practically taken for granted".
But "as always happens when an armed organisation
begins to fade away", Le Monde warns, "the lost fighters of Corsican nationalism
are certainly still capable of the worst".
German politics
In Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
believes that Oskar Lafontaine, the former finance minister and former leader of
the Social Democrats, put his foot in it when he threatened on Sunday to help
form a breakaway leftist party if Chancellor Schroeder's government continues
with benefit cuts which have led to protests across Germany.
The paper believes these remarks may well cost
the controversial left-wing politician the party's backing even in his native
Saarland.
"This was probably Mr Lafontaine's biggest
mistake since his resignation in the spring of 1999," the paper
says.
Lafontaine knows that the Chancellor would rather lose office than visibly change the direction of his social reforms
Lafontaine knows that the Chancellor would rather lose office than visibly change the direction of his social reforms
Die Welt
It suggests that his remarks come at a time when
his party needs him as a counterweight to Mr Schroeder.
"Somebody should have a word with Lafontaine - as
one Social Democrat to another," the paper urges.
Die Welt, for its part, suggests that Mr
Lafontaine's real plan is to found what it calls "his own Lafontaine
party".
Mr Lafontaine's "patronising ultimatum to the SPD
was nothing of the kind," the paper says, "because Oskar Lafontaine also knows
that the chancellor would rather lose office than visibly change the direction
of his social reforms".
Looking at the situation from further afield, the
Spanish El Pais accuses Oskar Lafontaine of "disloyalty to a political project"
as well as "intellectual frivolity" for, as the paper puts it, "suggesting a
leftward split" and "according respectability to parties which remain attached
to a totalitarian tradition in eastern Germany".
"So far," the paper says, Mr Lafontaine "has only
contributed to aggravating the crisis in his own party", has "worsened the
confrontation with the trade unions" and has made the SPD's internal rifts "more
acute".
"Lafontaine's insolence," it argues, "provides
not so much a solution to the crisis as a way of making it worse."
Olympics
France's Le Monde believes that Greece, the host
of the 2004 Olympics, "no longer has much in common" with the country which
staged the first modern Games in 1896.
It points out that present-day Greece is a member
of the European Union and the euro zone, "to which", the daily says, "it owes
its new prosperity and national pride".
All that it was humanly possible to do has been done, but absolute security is impossible to achieve
All that it was humanly possible to do has been done, but absolute security is impossible to achieve
La Razon
Did this perhaps cause Athens to be "a little
over-ambitious", the paper wonders, and to "under-estimate the technical
difficulties involved" in staging the 2004 Games?
But it predicts that "no doubt... all will be
sorted out... as if by magic".
The paper feels that even "taking place under the
heavy mantle of pollution for which Athens is unfortunately famous", the event,
watched by billions of TV viewers, "will be a great tribute" to the
country.
While conceding that the heavy security will cast
"a pall" over the games, the paper points out that such precautions are
"understandable in the current climate".
In Spain, El Pais also voices concerns over
security at the games because, it stresses, "a more attractive pretext for
terrorism would be hard to find".
"Nobody can guarantee absolute protection against
psychopaths prepared to commit suicide", the paper concedes, but it is reassured
that Athens seems to have "adopted all reasonable measures".
Also in Madrid, La Razon declares itself
confident that "all that it was humanly possible to do has been done". But the
paper warns that "absolute security is impossible to achieve."
The European press review is compiled by BBC
Monitoring from internet editions of the main European newspapers and some early
printed editions
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0.91/public/-/2/hi/europe/3547480.stm
Corsican separatism, German politics and the Olympics come under the spotlight in Monday's European papers
