European press review

The growing corruption scandal engulfing the French president, the Chinese Olympic bid and the forthcoming G8 summit feature in the European press. Also making an appearance are Croatia's human rights policy and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

Chirac's "house on fire"

Most of the French newspapers comment on the questioning of President Jacques Chirac's daughter over alleged illegal cash payments for foreign trips when he was mayor of Paris.

"Chirac's house on fire", headlines the left-leaning newspaper Liberation on its front page. "Safely entrenched inside the Elysee presidential palace where he knows that no gendarmes will come to escort him to the court building" - the French constitution forbids it - "Jacques Chirac sees his closest relatives having to answer to magistrates about the mechanisms of a system which was entirely devoted to his political career", the paper writes.

"We would willingly sympathize," it says with a hint of irony. "But we cannot forget that what is happening here is deferred condemnation of the reprehensible confusion between private and public life, between personal leisure and official duties".

The affair seems to amuse France's neighbours. "Is it worth shaking the stability of the state just for 500,000 or 300,000 Swiss francs?" the Swiss Le Temps wonders. Yes, it answers. "The debate is essential because it concerns less the amount of money which has allegedly been taken - for the Prince's pleasure - from secret state funds or any other sources, than this facility itself, the privileges enjoyed by the first figure of the state in the country of equality".

China plays its Olympic trumps

"Should the 2008 Olympic Games be offered to Beijing?" the French Le Figaro wonders on its front page as the International Olympic Committee prepares to make its final decision on the venue for the championships on Friday.

The paper then goes on to take a close look at what it calls "Beijing's ambiguous trump cards".

"In an attempt to make people forget its political handicaps", China presents itself as a "country with one billion inhabitants, which means a vast commercial playground whose potential already makes international firms drool," the paper writes. "Beijing's supporters see in the Olympic Games the opportunity for China to open itself to the rest of the world, transforming and developing itself by 2008".

But Beijing does not only have advantages, the paper stresses. "First everything - or nearly everything - needs to be reconstructed, and, above all, the Chinese political regime promotes neither clemency nor indulgence at a time when it may be entrusted with the organization of such an incomparable media event.

"One can easily imagine the ideological use which could be made of Beijing's victory," the paper warns, before wondering whether the International Olympic Committee "is going to take the risk of giving a blank cheque to Beijing?"

A "despicable" guest at the G8 summit

The leading French newspaper Le Monde wonders why a man like Vladimir Putin "had to be invited to the G8 summit" to be held in Genoa in a few days' time.

It is the Russian president's Chechen policy which upsets the newspaper. "Putin launched this second campaign in Chechnya nearly two years ago, but he has not kept any of his promises," it stresses. "The Russian army is still there... In less than twenty months it has allegedly killed 30,000 Chechens. It only just controls the capital Groznyy and it has not defeated any rebels".

On 2 July, while French President Jacques Chirac was meeting Putin in Moscow, "the Russian army was carrying out in three different villages these 'mopping-up operations' which have sadly become the norm", the paper says.

"This war might have been forgotten" by the international community, but it nevertheless remains "despicable". "It is a thousand times more deadly and destructive than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the paper concludes.

Brave "step forward" in Croatia

The Spanish daily El Pais says Croatia's decision to collaborate with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague was right even though the government may now fall when Prime Minister Ivica Racan faces a confidence motion on Sunday.

The paper stresses that the move was particularly difficult as the two generals the court wants to try for human rights abuses are considered heroes by some Croats and the weak government runs the risk of "street demonstrations and angry outbursts from the more right-wing parties".

It therefore urges the EU and the USA to "make an appropriate assessment" of what it calls "the most serious test so far of the reformist Croats elected almost a year and a half ago".

The paper argues that the pressure brought to bear on Croatia shows that, after securing the handover of Slobodan Milosevic by Serbia, the Hague tribunal "wants to seize the culminating moment and tighten the seige around the various governments involved".

"Definitive pacification and reconciliation in the most tragic and unstable part of Europe in the last half century depend crucially on exemplary justice being done," the paper says. "In this respect, the Croatian government has taken a step forward, even though the price may be painful surgery".

Africa's "political cowardice" on Mugabe

London's The Independent slams the "political cowardice" of African leaders for failing to give Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe a rough ride at this week's Organization of African Unity (OAU) summit in Zambia.

The daily highlights three "depressing strands" reflecting the situation in the country: the charging of the main opposition leader with "terrorism", a self-inflicted food crisis caused by Mugabe's opportunistic resurrection of the land issue and the stance of his neighbours.

It says the OAU failed to condemn "the violence Mr Mugabe has unleashed" in the countryside and "shamefully" fell short of criticizing the Zimbabwean leader, who was then able to declare that "We and Africa are now speaking in the same language".

The Independent dismisses the argument that criticizing Mr Mugabe is a result of "a secret hankering for the old days of white colonial rule". "Condemnation of the Zimbabwean government has nothing to do with colonialism and everything to do with democracy," it says, and "African leaders are in a uniquely strong position" to isolate the country's president.

Shark warning for EU's Prodi

Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warns that European Commission head Romano Prodi's efforts to secure more powers for the EU executive and his often unguarded statements could land the former Bologna professor in trouble.

Describing Mr Prodi as "an impulsive, honest man who sometimes mistakes the shark-infested European pond for a lecture hall", the paper says that the EC president is the perfect example of how power and powerlessness walk hand in hand in Brussels. "As the head of the EU executive, he rubs shoulders with the world leaders as their equal," it writes. "But in actual fact, he is at the beck and call of the heads of state and government of the 15 EU states."

The paper says that Prodi's eagerness to "keep everyone happy" and discuss sensitive matters, including the recent Irish No vote in a referendum on the Nice Treaty, in a rather open manner might be a very Italian thing but could become a real headache for the president.

"The president should learn to exercise diplomatic discretion, otherwise he could undermine his own authority," it warns.

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