European press review

The difficulties facing the delegates at the United Nations conference on climate change, which opens today in the Netherlands, are given wide coverage across the continent.

The funicular railway fire in Austria also makes the front pages in most countries, while the latest developments in the US presidential election vote count are still making the headlines.

Climate of change

"The inhabitants of earth at the planet's bedside", is the headline of a front page article in Paris's Le Figaro on the international conference on climate change which starts in The Hague today.

"Eight years after the Earth Summit in Rio", the paper says, and "three years after the Kyoto conference, this meeting looks like being decisive".

With many countries badly failing to meet the commitments they made at Kyoto to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the paper says: "This time, the governments of the world must agree on concrete means for achieving this goal."

If they fail to, the "consequences could be dramatic" with "oceans rising by one metre, repeated storms, worse droughts in the Tropics, and heavier rainfall at our latitudes", it adds.

"As if the negotiations didn't look like being complicated enough, the absence of a result in the American presidential election is going to seriously confuse the issue," the paper concludes.

Germany's Frankfurter Rundschau says the future of the planet is at stake at The Hague conference.

The paper deplores that most industrial countries have actually increased their carbon dioxide emissions since the Kyoto agreement of 1997.

It recalls that the US, Canada and Australia managed to introduce a number of escape clauses into the agreement, such as the right to trade carbon dioxide emissions with other countries.

"In The Hague," the paper concludes, "everything now hinges on the position of the EU and developing countries".

Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung disagrees. The paper acknowledges that the USA is reluctant to burden companies or consumers with energy saving measures.

It points out that the USA would rather finance better power stations or new forests in poor countries.

The paper calls this concept "open to abuse, but not wrong. If the USA can avoid more carbon dioxide in India than at home, then why not?"

'Tunnel of Hell'

Vienna's Die Presse says the funicular railway accident in Austria has plunged the country into mourning.

For the paper, it is far too early to allocate blame for what it calls "the biggest catastrophe that has ever happened in Austria".

"The only thing that can be done right now", it concludes, "is to pause, to meditate on the transitory nature of things, and to sympathise with the families that have suffered such a terrible blow".

Another Vienna paper, Der Standard, nevertheless poses two questions in relation to the tragedy.

"Firstly", it asks, "have the authorities ... in the wake of road tunnel catastrophes in Austria and Switzerland given sufficient thought to tunnel safety in other areas?"

"Secondly", it adds, "why is it that there is an ever greater number of ever more deadly catastrophes in alpine regions?"

"Death in the Alpine metro which never should have burnt" is the headline of an article in Geneva's Le Temps.

"Two days after the funicular fire in the Kitzsteinhorn tunnel ... investigators have not found anything which explains the origin of the tragedy", in which at least 155 people died, the paper says.

"It is the worst tragedy in the history of winter sports," it adds.

"Such an accident appears to be unimaginable in facilities of the same type in Switzerland, according to those in charge of them, who are however awaiting the results of the Austrian investigation to draw possible lessons from it," the paper says.

In an editorial entitled "Tragedy in the tunnel", Madrid's El Pais says the Austrian accident represents the "worst possible scenario for a tragedy".

It writes that the tragic consequences of the accident - inside a tunnel "narrow, like a tube, without any emergency exists or sprinkler systems" - were unavoidable.

The paper says it was a "miracle" that 12 people travelling in the funicular, hailed as the "pride of Austrian engineering", managed to escape alive.

It adds that this may well be the first accident involving a funicular, but those involving ski lifts and cable cars are becoming more frequent as the demand for winter sports increases.

No matter how complex the layout of the mountain maybe, the paper concludes, safety is one thing that should not be compromised.

Staying in Madrid, El Mundo says in its editorial "Tunnel of Hell" that despite the perfection of the Austrian tunnel "155 people have died, which seems to indicate that the time has come to revise... the design of building claustrophobic tunnels which, at the smallest spark, are converted into mortal capsules".

Sweaty palms recount votes

"The Florida authorities order a recount by hand of 450,000 votes" reads the headline of Spain's El Pais.

The paper says "the Palm Beach electoral commission took this decision in view of the possible irregularities detected during the vote by vote recount of 1% of the ballots".

It adds that in this small sample "36 new votes in favour of the Democrat candidate, Al Gore, were discovered".

Berlin's Die Welt advises Al Gore to take the moral high ground by stepping back from the presidential race in the US.

The paper suggests that such a move would be smart, statesman-like and gentleman-like.

"Al Gore's withdrawal", it points out, "would give him an opportunity to whip and torture the illegitimate president George W Bush as he pleased - leading to victory in Congressional elections in 2002 and his entry into the White House in 2004".

The Slovak daily Pravda weighs up the prospects of the two main actors - George W. Bush and Al Gore, as well as their parties - in the current US presidential impasse.

Given the current tension between the Bush and Gore camps and the social polarisation the impasse has generated, the winner of the race will face a tough task, the daily says.

As George W Bush is a more likely candidate to succeed, it will be him who will have to live up to his self-made image of "a unifier from Texas" and address the sensitive polarisation issue.

And this will be a difficult and "unenviable" task.

The Democrats, on the other hand, can live in the hope that in four year's time voters will view them positively and reward their candidate once again with two terms in the White House, Pravda says.

According to the Hungarian paper Nepszabadsag, a nation's split between the right and the left shown by the US presidential election is not unprecedented.

It recalls "the total division of the nation" in the latest Israeli elections when the victory of the right led to what it calls "the end of all positive processes".

The paper wonders what will happen if a similar bipolar political structure also "crystallises" in Hungary by the next elections in 2002.

"We are no less passionate than any other nation," the paper warns.

Mad cows call for wise words

"Political wisdom and mad cow disease", is the headline of an editorial in Le Monde in Paris on recent political developments surrounding mad cow disease in France.

"The mad cow disease affair has today become an affair of state," the editorial says.

It says that Prime Minister "Lionel Jospin can no longer get away without making a formal statement... explaining the decisions that the government intends to take faced with the risk of the emergence of the human form of mad cow disease".

"The handling of this issue is all the more complex because all the preventive measures taken on a national level only make sense if they are part of a plan which is also adopted by the whole of the European Union," it adds.

And it warns that "the first signs of a movement which could lead to France being classed as being in the category of countries ... the most exposed to the risk can already be seen".

The European press review is compiled by BBC Monitoring from internet editions of the main European newspapers and some early printed editions.