European press review

European papers join in the fierce debate about human cloning, but they also highlight the arrests of aid workers in Afghanistan and the crisis in Macedonia.

'Scientific gangsters'

Austria's Die Presse ponders Italian doctor Severino Antinori's controversial decision to use cloning technology to help infertile couples have children.

"Severino Antinori is loved by Lady Luck - and not only because of those elderly ladies to whom he gave the gift of children," the paper writes. "He also managed to defend his plan before the US National Academies of Science".

But, calling Dr Antinori "a taboo buster," the paper warns that the Italian's ambitious plans could have serious implications and suggests his cloning project is destined to fail. "The whole Dolly the Sheep experience speaks volumes," it says.

"If the planned cloning programmes do not succeed, reproduction technology will reach a dead end and medical research can safely return to efforts to find a cure for malaria or TB," it writes.

For France's leading daily Le Monde, Dr Antinori's plans to implant cloned human embryos into wombs are not only provocative, but also - paradoxically - constructive.

"We need to thank Dr Severino Antinori today," the paper says in an editorial.

"By wanting to make reproductive cloning the natural extension of therapeutic cloning, Dr Antinori is forcing everyone - citizens, scientists, government leaders and international institutions on ethics - to adopt a clear stance and say whether they accept or reject the sweeping away of centuries-old taboos," the paper writes.

And this sort of clear stance is to be found in Hungary's Magyar Hirlap, which warns in stark terms that "the world is powerless to stop the scientific gangsters". It is convinced that even if Antinori fails to clone the first human, copycats are bound to emerge.

The paper fears these experiments could end in tragedy as it is impossible to predict if the clones will have any "feelings of friendship and love for kith and kin, or if they will simply have an empty and materialistic character". It concludes that the answer to human cloning can only be "no".

Afghan arrests

"Is freedom of religion a human right?" asks Germany's Die Welt in connection with the Taleban's arrest of Western aid workers, including four Germans, accused of attempting to promote Christianity among Muslims. "This freedom is recognised by the UN as a universal value... and a human right," comes the answer.

"Even if the aid workers did spread Christianity - what a horrible act! - levelling accusations [at them] was a crime," the paper argues, before going on to rebuke German diplomats for remaining silent.

"The Taleban's feared religious police accuses aid workers of being missionaries, locks them up and forces confessions from them. It threatens allegedly converted Afghans with execution and shifts their children to a reform centre (where they will receive an Islamic education). Surely, all this should have sparked off protests across the civilised world," it argues.

"Instead, the whole affair has been played down by the Foreign Ministry," it points out, adding that Germany has clearly reached a point in its foreign policy "where diplomacy turns into opportunism".

The Frankfurter Rundschau says it will now be much more difficult to continue providing assistance to a country where the level of need is desperate.

"Afghanistan is clearly in need of international assistance. But those gentlemen in charge of the country and its 25 million inhabitants are making it virtually impossible to provide this aid," it argues.

The paper says the aid workers are likely to escape the movement's hard-line punishment, as "international diplomacy will probably save them from suffering the consequences Taleban-style".

Macedonia paradox

Macedonia is teetering on the brink again, with the Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties signing an agreement on the one hand, and a sudden upsurge of fighting on the other.

"War or peace?" asks the Swiss Le Temps. "Never before has Macedonia wavered so much between these two fates," the paper says.

"Never before has the military situation appeared so desperate (...) and yet never before have the country's main political parties seemed so close to a mutually satisfactory settlement."

The French Le Monde points to the continuing clashes as a sign that the ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (UCK) "remain a threat".

"The UCK, which is not represented at the negotiations," the paper says, "is trying to prove that nothing much can be done without its participation".

Putin embraces Kim

Budapest's Magyar Hirlap condemns Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the hearty reception he gave to the "diminutive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, attired in a Stalinist tunic".

"Let us look at Putin," the paper says in an editorial headlined "The way we were". "In the interest of the Russian empire, he is even ready to create an alliance with a dictator, whose people are struggling with dire starvation, two-thirds of whose subjects are kept by the provisions of the international community, and who, despite all this, is feeding an army of millions while he keeps firing missiles over a frightened Japan".

The daily says Putin could build a more appropriate relationship with North Korea. But "there is a higher goal before his eyes and that's why he was willing to slap Russian democracy in the face and hug the dear leader. In his delusion about an empire, he forgot about the Afghanistan-syndrome and was unable to see the Chechnya symptom either. However, he showed it to America!"

Dutch find EU a tight fit

Naming the greatest Europeans may be open to debate, but the biggest, according to the French Le Figaro, are the Dutch, who stand at an average 1.802 metres for the men and 1.672 for the women. Which means trouble for some of them.

The problem, Le Figaro says, is that some 30% of Holland's population exceed the EU norms for the size of goods like clothes and furniture, and for measurements like the distances between seats in buses and airplanes. So they have formed an association to campaign for a change in the rules.

As a result of "Brussels' standardising frenzy", the paper notes, everything in Europe "turns out to be too small for the Scandinavians and too large for the southern Europeans".

Being tall has its advantages, the paper says, as in the fact that "a tall person is among the first to know that it has started to rain". But the drawbacks can be unpleasant, as when "spending the flight from Paris to New York with one's knees up one's nostrils, if not somebody else's".

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