European press review

If proof were needed that 'no news is good news', it is patent in the fact that the blast that killed 15 people and wounded dozens in central Jerusalem yesterday is the 'big' story in all the European papers.

No good tidings from Macedonia either, over which there is a consensus that things can only get worse.

So the exception is Tony Blair, who made friends and influenced people in the birthplace of the tango.

The infernal cycle

Under the headline, "Stop the bloodshed", the Spanish El Pais says that yesterday's suicide bomb in central Jerusalem "reflected the cruelty of all such indiscriminate attacks", but also "showed up the failure of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's methods".

"Sharon is deliberately ignoring the fact that it takes more courage to negotiate than to send tanks against defenceless populations," the paper says.

"Stop the war", says Madrid's ABC, which sees it as imperative that international condemnation "goes beyond the conveying of condolences and the wringing of hands". Instead, it must be such as to "force Arabs and Jews to negotiate the just peace that they are unable to attain on their own".

La Razon, for its part, says that the brutality of the attack "even seems to have woken up the president of the United States". In effect, it adds, President Bush has "issued his first public warning", asking Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "immediately to arrest those responsible for the slaughter".

"It would be a mistake, a grave mistake on Ariel Sharon's part," the paper warns, "were he to respond to President Bush's gesture by shedding more innocent blood."

Berlin's Die Tageszeitung is in no doubt that the Israeli army will retaliate heavily. The situation, it says, is "very explosive, very unstable and very charged with emotion", which means it has all "the three ingredients of war".

This is an outcome partly of Israel's making, the paper believes. On the one hand, it says, Israel is demanding of Yasser Arafat an unconditional end to violence, while on the other it "destroys his authority with the repressive policy of occupation and the deliberate shooting of the alleged masterminds of the attacks."

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says the attack was "only a matter of time". Over the past few days, it notes, many Israelis had spoken of what it calls "the calm before the storm".

After the attack, as efforts were under way to clean up the scene of the bombing, it says, "many were waiting for darkness to fall - and for the Israeli army to retaliate".

In Russia, Vremya Novostey notes that Palestinians had pledged retribution for the targeted killings of several of their militants.

"Unable to get at members of the Israeli army and intelligence services," the paper says, "they chose as their victims civilians peacefully eating in a pizzeria."

"This unties the hands of those in the Israeli army who have long called for 'getting the enemy wherever he is'," the paper adds.

The daily Trud, for its part, sees "no way out of the vicious circle".

"With each new act of violence, be it another murder of a Jewish settler or massive reprisals by Israeli troops, the tension grows," the paper says.

Trud blames Israel for "pouring oil on the flames of confrontation" by demanding the hand-over by Palestine of those it calls terrorists, while the settlement by Jews of occupied areas goes on.

"The reprisals being planned last night by the Israeli government will not break this infernal cycle," says the French Liberation.

Yasser Arafat must "do more than ritually condemn every new attack": he must "actively hunt down the attackers", it adds.

Ariel Sharon, "must be made to see the violence will not go away overnight and that will only fade away under some form of monitoring", the paper suggests. "This need not necessarily be international - as he will not hear of it - but at least American."

"What with his month-long Texan holiday and his phobia of involvement abroad, George W. Bush may not like the idea, Liberation adds, "but it is hard to see how he can limit himself to verbal exhortations for much longer."

Teetering on the verge

The French Le Monde warns against "any illusions" concerning the peace accord initialled in Macedonia on Wednesday, because, the paper believes, the country "is headed for civil war".

The UCK guerrillas "are certainly aiming for more than improving the lot of the ethnic Albanians", the paper says. They want "secession for the mostly Albanian-speaking region bordering Kosovo and Albania".

If the agreement is signed, it is "neither serious nor credible" of Nato to say that its troops will go in for 30 days to supervise the disarmament of the guerrillas, the paper adds. Besides monitoring implementation of the accord, the Nato force must "reassure the Slav majority" and "stand between the Albanian minority and the temptation of violence".

"For the mission to make any sense, it must last longer than a month. Best admit this now and avoid any ambiguity," it warns.

The German Die Welt is against Nato going in at all. To the rhetorical question of whether the alliance "has not been overtaken by events", the paper provides its own answer, namely that no-one seriously believes that the agreed peace plan will be signed on Monday.

That, it says, "is good for Nato. It should use this time to reconsider its deployment in Macedonia".

In Russia, Novyye Izvestiya says the latest violence vindicates those who failed to see how it was possible to wage war on one group, the ethnic Albanian fighters, while negotiating with another, the ethnic Albanian politicians, "whose writ in Moscow terms runs no further than the ring road" around the capital.

"Unfortunately their predictions came true earlier than predicted," the paper says.

Still in Russia, Trud takes an equally pessimistic view, noting that "the political pendulum, having stopped awhile when the talks were on, has suddenly swung towards civil war".

Despite all the peace efforts, the paper sees the country as "sliding inexorably into civil war, with unpredictable consequences for the whole Balkan region".

The Russian Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda is less than impressed by the Nato-brokered peace agreement. To believe that the Albanian fighters will voluntarily turn in their weapons to Nato peacekeepers is to be "out of touch with reality", the paper says.

The UCK guerrillas "will continue their war against the lawful authority and the new peacekeepers will be unable able to stop them", the paper predicts.

Austria's Salzburger Nachrichten says the outlines of what it calls "post-war" Macedonia are already discernible.

"The majority-Albanian west will remain firmly in the hands of the Albanian warlords," the paper says, "while the Macedonian nationalists will rule in the east and centre of the country."

The hard-liners on both sides do not want the peace talks to succeed, the paper believes. "First and foremost, this is about power and the control of territories," it says.

The ticking of the Irish clock

The Hungarian Nepszava says there is a "race against time in Northern Ireland" to save the 1998 Good Friday agreement.

There is "some cause for optimism" in the fact that, as the paper puts it, "for the first time ever, the IRA has proposed a method to resolve the problem of disarmament".

Other than taking up the IRA's proposal, Britain's Tony Blair could suspend a Northern Ireland Assembly "which proved so difficult to put together", or call new elections in the province, the paper notes. But the first course of action would be an "open admission of failure", while the second would "strengthen the extremists in the Northern Ireland legislative".

This is why "London and Dublin are looking feverishly for a fudge", it adds, and, "as the clock ticks on, one can only hope it is not the ticking of a time-bomb".

Anyone for tango?

The Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta has praise for the British prime minister, noting that his Latin American tour has earned him more kudos than any other visiting foreign leader.

In Argentina in particular, the paper notes, Tony Blair helped arrange a credit restructuring and "quietly, speedily and selflessly endeavoured at least to postpone the bankruptcy of a country which had considered Britain its main enemy for almost two decades".

Not only did Mr Blair "put an end to the pointless war of words over the ownership of the Falklands", the paper says, but he appeared in Argentina with "the halo of the saviour of the nation".

And so it came to pass that what the paper calls the "hateful image" of Thatcher the Iron Lady was replaced by the engaging personality of "Amigo Antonio".

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