European press review

European papers consider whether France's President Chirac should risk a face-to-face debate with far-right challenger Jean-Marie Le Pen, while Russia ponders the non-outcome of a summit meeting on the Caspian Sea. And in Ukraine, a very tall woman recounts her woes.

French debate

The French Nouvel Observateur questions the wisdom of President Jacques Chirac's refusal to have a televised debate with his rival in the second round of the presidential election, far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Mr Chirac's argument that no debate is possible "in the face of intolerance and hatred... is not without force", the paper says.

"On the other hand," it adds, "a debate could help Chirac to reveal the true face of Le Pen, the face of demagogy and hatred."

By exposing "the dangers of a political programme that would ruin France in a matter of months", Mr Chirac might be able to puncture what the paper calls "the windbag Le Pen".

La Libre Belgique, on the other hand, says that accepting the debate would confer on Mr Le Pen respectability that "he does not deserve".

"Allowing Le Pen to express himself is, unfortunately, what democracy is about," the paper adds. "But to dignify him with a debate would be an insult to democracy."

Back in France, the leading daily Le Monde notes that the National Front leader did not beat about the bush when asked on Tuesday on prime time TV about his political programme.

With what the paper calls "incredible self-assurance and phenomenal ease", Mr Le Pen promised preferential treatment for French nationals against foreigners in all walks of life, with immigrant workers being "encouraged to return to their countries of origin".

"Selective redundancies" would be one of the chosen forms of "encouragement".

There would be a referendum on leaving the EU and returning to the franc, income tax would be phased out and customs barriers brought back, as would capital punishment.

"It's purely and simply a recipe for civil war," the paper concludes.

Czech dilemma

Prague's Mlada Fronta Dnes reports that the Czech parliament on Wednesday voted unanimously against reopening the issue of the postwar Benes decrees under which some 2.5 million ethnic Germans were expelled from the then Czechoslovakia.

The vote was held in response to the recent calls on Prague by Austria and Germany to repeal the decrees, the paper explains. The deputies, it says, "agreed that it is not possible to question the outcome of the war".

The Austrian Der Standard sees electoral considerations at stake. It believes that by refusing to reopen the contentious issue, Czech leaders hoped to score political points in the run-up to the June elections.

The parliament's decision to leave the decrees untouched, the paper says, reflects the nationalist atmosphere prevailing in the country ahead of the elections.

"Prague's resolution on the Benes Decrees is above all motivated by current developments on the domestic political scene," it adds.

Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, for its part, sees the vote as a "cowardly" mistake.

It agrees that the Czechs need assurances that they will not be sued to return German property, by argues that declaring the Benes decrees inviolable is the wrong way of going about it.

"How cowardly is Prague's political class?", the paper asks. "It dares not confront the citizens with the reality that these decrees... violated the law and the principles of humanity."

But the Frankfurter Rundschau warns that "legal chaos" would ensue were the decrees to be repealed.

The paper blames Austria's "right-wing populist" Joerg Haider for stirring up the issue after Berlin and Prague had already resolved it.

Caspian stalemate

The failure of the first ever summit of the five Caspian states to make progress towards an agreement on dividing up the sea and its oil resources attracts considerable attention in the Russian press.

The leading daily Izvestiya writes that the meeting in the Turkmen capital, Asgabat, ended in "scandal" when the presidents of Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan declined to sign a joint declaration, blaming too many unresolved problems.

The paper says proposals for a CIS gas alliance that Russia and Kazakhstan had been promoting "can also be regarded as dead and buried" because Turkmen President Saparmyrat Nyyazow withdrew his backing.

Analysing the absence of progress, the paper explains that efforts to define the Caspian's status have lost some of their urgency after "exploration showed that commercial reserves of oil in its southern part are much smaller than in the northern".

But the paper manages to draw some comfort from the outcome of the meeting: "Strange as it may seem, the failure of the summit is good for Russia. Until the five states of the region divide up the Caspian, Russia will remain the chief transit exporter of Caspian oil."

According to the tabloid Moskovskiy Komsomolets, each leader "came with his own 'baggage', and so, of course, no fundamental decisions were possible".

Lofty Ukrainian blues

The Ukrainian popular tabloid Segodnya runs a story about Ukraine's tallest woman.

Lyuba Shylo says she is unhappy because of her height. "If it weren't for my 2 metre 13 centimetres, my life would have been different," she says. "People in the street always point at me."

Lyuba was happy as a child, when she played basketball, but she had to leave sports after she broke an arm.

It is impossible for her to buy clothes or footwear her size, as there's simply nothing on sale in Ukraine for girls as tall as she is.

Lyuba lives alone in a northern village in Chernihiv Region. Her five-year-old son lives with his grandmother. Lyuba mops streets for living and she drinks.

She does not want to think about the future. "My dream is that my son should live better than his mother. I want him to be of normal height, I don't want him to differ from other people," she told Segodnya.

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