European press review

Judging by Wednesday's papers, the fear of Mad Cow Disease seems to be spreading in Europe far faster than the disease itself. The Middle East also features in many front pages and editorial columns, but leader writers are running out of things to say about the real-life 'soap opera' of the American presidential election.

The Kaprun tragedy

In the aftermath of the Kaprun funicular train tragedy, Austria's Die Presse ponders what it sees as the country's "strange reflex" to disaster.

"Whenever a disaster strikes abroad, the possibility of something similar happening in this country is almost invariably ruled out," the paper says. But "as soon as Austria is struck, suddenly everyone had been aware of the danger" in advance.

"Quite obviously, there is a serious discrepancy in this country between knowing about something and doing anything about it," the paper points out.

Mad cows and Frenchmen

The front pages of the French press are dominated by the latest government measures to calm public fears over the growing number of cases of Mad Cow Disease, or BSE.

"No more meat and bone-meal in feed for pigs and poultry, no more sides of beef for humans," the daily Le Parisien writes, adding that public opinion has pushed a somewhat reluctant Prime Minister Lionel Jospin into taking what it calls these two "shock measures".

This view is echoed by the Christian daily La Croix, which believes that Mr Jospin's decision to ban the use of suspect animal feed products and the sale of beef-on-the-bone was based on fear rather than reality. "Public opinion was prepared for this, the leaders followed it," the paper says in an editorial.

According to the financial daily La Tribune, France's European partners "consider these precautionary measures to have no scientific basis". The paper says that in order to make up for the ban, soya-based feeds will have to be imported, the cost of which is put at 5bn francs.

The Paris-based International Herald Tribune, says that Prime Minister Jospin acted "under pressure from a panicky public" at a time when he was "still waiting for scientific advice".

The Swiss Le Temps says the issue of BSE is being used in France as "a political weapon" in the increasingly tetchy cohabitation between the Gaullist President Jacques Chirac and the Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, expected rivals in the 2002 presidential election.

President Jacques Chirac "realised that he could reap personal dividends" from urging a ban on animal meal", the paper says. So he went ahead in a televised address, "just after French viewers had watched in shock the agony of a victim of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease", the human form of BSE.

Beware Blair bearing euros?

Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung says Europeans should not be taken in by the British prime minister's recent attempts to set himself up as a "constructive European".

Disabusing those who might see his Europhile utterances as heralding the start of a campaign to adopt the euro, the paper says that "on the contrary, Blair's Euro-enthusiastic verbiage is designed to hide the fact that the chances of Britain joining the euro are now worse than ever".

The whole project has been shelved in the face of negative public opinion, it adds, "a grave handicap for someone like Blair, who would like to play a major role in Europe".

US elections

Germany's Die Welt deplores what it sees as the "latent anti-American sentiments" shown by national commentators over the Florida election fiasco.

"There have been no dirty tricks or corruption in the US presidential elections," the paper points out. "Bush and Gore are merely the victims of a statistical improbability."

"One thing the USA does not need is a lecture from Europe on the subject of democracy", the paper says.

Warsaw's Rzeczpospolita says that the system used in the United States to report election results not only turned out to be fallible but also compromised the media. It says that the day after the elections, "Americans looked for results by channel hopping between TV networks with one hand and surfing the net with the other".

But both the old and the new media carried wrong reports from the same source, the Voter News Service consortium set up by the Associated Press and the TV networks, the paper points out.

"The Internet should find its own sources instead of being a mouthpiece of the television," the paper concludes.

TV or not TV - is that the question?

The modern version of the old chicken-or-egg question (which comes first, the incident or the TV crews?) is evoked by former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in an interview with the French Le Nouvel Observateur. He believes that TV coverage is exacerbating the confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians.

"These days, what is seen on television is more powerful than what really happens on the battlefield," the paper quotes him as saying. "The pictures being sent out non-stop make it very difficult for the two peoples to control their emotions and their reactions."

On the other hand he sees the presence of the TV cameras as an argument against the need for the unarmed international observers proposed by France.

"Foreign observers would help solve nothing," he says. "Besides, I know no better observers than the TV cameras, and we've got plenty of those."

The wrath of Taylor

In an interview with France's Le Monde, Liberian President Charles Taylor says Britain's diamond interests are to blame for the nine-year civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Taylor, whose country has been accused of using the war to organise diamond trafficking, tells the paper there are British officials who own diamond mines in Sierra Leone.

"This war is taking place because the British want these diamonds," the paper quotes him as saying. "That's why British soldiers are there, not because of us".

According to Taylor, currently on a private visit to Paris, France has treated his country "fairly", unlike the British who - in his view - stopped European aid being sent to Liberia.

"But I am a Christian," Taylor goes on, "and God has sent floods to Britain ... which will cost it one or two billion dollars. God has punished Britain."

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