European press review

Europe's papers describe the agreement reached at the UN climate conference in Bonn as significant but insufficient.

A French and an Austrian paper comment on the dramatic shift of power in Indonesia.

A German paper detects embarrassed silence in Europe following US-Russian talks on missile defence in Genoa, while two papers take another look at the lessons that must be learnt from the G8 summit.

From Kyoto to Bonn

Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung says the climate summit in Bonn will come to stand for considerable but insufficient progress in the fight against global warming.

For the paper, Bonn 2001 will henceforth be as important a reference point as Rio 1992 and Kyoto 1997.

"Bonn 2001 is also," it warns, "a completely inadequate, a hardly noticeable step towards a kind of climate protection that takes due account of the concerns of science, of the feared consequences of global warming."

Nevertheless, the paper points out that there is no other international environmental treaty that is as far-reaching in its consequences for the signatories as this one.

"The outcome could have been much worse," it concludes.

"Kyoto is dead - the climate protocol lives" is how Austria's Kurier comments on the deal reached in Bonn.

"After the USA's withdrawal, all the stops were pulled out for the great summit compromise," the paper says.

It notes that the target of a 5.2% reduction in greenhouse gases was cut down to 2% or less.

"The Bonn climate conference rescued the Kyoto Protocol, but not the world's climate by any means," the paper concludes.

Switzerland's Le Temps describes the climate deal as "a small step".

The paper says noble intentions have led to no more than modest acts.

"But this is a beginning, a victory of pragmatism," it concludes.

Still in Switzerland, La Tribune De Geneve says the planet can get ready "to breathe a sigh of relief".

The paper says from Rio to Bonn via the Kyoto Protocol, humanity has come a long way in addressing the issue of climate change.

"A conference in Bonn has just saved the protocol," the paper says, "spurred on by European Union countries and after some compromises, in particular with Canada and Japan."

The Budapest daily Magyar Hirlap shares Greenpeace's view that a kind of "Kyoto-light" has been produced at the climate summit.

While the paper is unsure "whether the compromise is a success or a failure", it sees the outcome as a sign of politicians giving in to public pressure.

"Although economic and national interests remain more important than environmental considerations, public pressure cannot be ignored", the paper says.

EU versus USA?

Germany's Berliner Zeitung sees the climate deal as a victory over "the US president and climate killer, George W Bush".

"The international community, and in particular the EU," the paper says, "has emancipated itself with this decision and has shown courage, which hasn't exactly been one of the most prominent characteristics of the Europeans, who are often at loggerheads with each other."

Belgium's De Standaard disagrees.

The paper says shortcomings in the agreement mean that the triumph of multilateralism over US unilateralism must be taken "with a pinch of salt".

It argues that anti-American sentiments may be understandable in the heat of the moment.

"But this jubilant mood must not last long," it warns, "for rather than isolating the Americans, concerted action should be taken to once again involve them in the search for solutions to the greenhouse effect."

Indonesia at crossroads

France's Le Figaro notes in a front-page headline that a woman has come to power in Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country in the world.

The paper says the fact that all members of the People's Consultative Assembly voted for the dismissal of Abdurrahman Wahid shows just how discredited his presidency had become.

It describes his successor, Magawati Sukarnoputri, as popular, but adds that she faces an enormous task.

"The archipelago is on the verge of collapse," the paper warns, adding that its destabilisation poses a threat to the region as a whole.

Austria's Die Presse says the election of Megawati Sukarnoputri has finally ended "months of increasingly bitter confrontation".

Describing Megawati as the dumb aide to the nearly blind Wahid - because she stayed silent when the country wanted her to speak out in the fight against the Suharto dictatorship - the paper notes that "it was certainly an odd couple that 21 months ago undertook the risky experiment of introducing democracy to the fourth-largest country in the world - and failed abysmally in the process".

Genoa revisited

France's Le Monde says the heads of state and government who met in Genoa rightly expressed the wish to give these international meetings their original meaning back.

"Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien's initiative to make these meetings smaller, by limiting the total number of official participants to 400, is appropriate," it says.

But it warns that this will not be enough to close the gap which separates these political leaders from public opinion.

"The Geneva summit brutally demonstrated that the G8 is badly understood and that it does not sufficiently take into account the fears that globalization raises," it says.

Slovakia's Pravda describes the protests at the G8 summit as a new class struggle and says Karl Marx would have been delighted.

The paper suggests, however, that the demonstrators lacked a united ideological basis.

One thing is clear, however, Pravda warns - and this is that "after the Genoa tragedy, future crowds may not be so disorganised and ideologically fragmented".

Europe wrong-footed

Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says Europe has been wrong-footed by the US-Russian plan to link the issues of missile defence and arms control.

"Europe's governments, in particular those on the continent, do not quite seem to know," the paper says, "how to respond to the American-Russian agreement reached in Genoa."

It argues that Russia's willingness to accept the initiative hardly comes as a surprise since it enables Moscow to remain in business in world politics.

For the paper, Europe's leaders now look like "the last remaining Cold War warriors" at a time when the main players have long begun to develop alternatives to the formula of stability through "mutually assured destruction".

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