European press review

Newspapers across the continent focus on George W Bush's long-awaited speech on the Middle East, in which he said that peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership.

'Unjust and arrogant'

The French Le Monde says Mr Bush's thinly-veiled call for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to go could be seen as "unjust and arrogant".

Bush may be right

Berlingske Tidende

"On what grounds," it asks, "does America assume the right to decide who should lead a national liberation movement?"

It adds that Washington "is not always quite so choosy" in picking its allies, referring to "certain warlords" in Afghanistan.

The Danish daily Berlingske Tidende is also critical of the attack on Mr Arafat.

"It is not part of the normal order of the day for a top international politician to demand in unequivocal terms that another people must depose its leader," it writes.

That was exactly what President Bush did, it adds, although it says that "Bush may be right".

"The Palestinians need to leave the Arafat era and everything it has involved in terms of terror and confrontations with Israel."

Because, the paper argues, when it comes down to it, Arafat has not shown himself to be the man who can create peace and tolerance between Israelis and Palestinians."

Humiliation

Sharon has prevailed in his feud with Arafat

NRC Handelsblad

Sweden's Dagens Nyheter is happy to see renewed US involvement in the peace process, although it too criticises Mr Bush's "humiliating treatment of a democratically elected leader".

It warns that "freezing out Arafat risks being counterproductive".

"Palestinians who are already humiliated may choose to rally behind a leader who many of them actually want to get rid of rather than accept an American diktat."

In the Netherlands, NRC Handelsblad says that the "elected president of the Palestinians... cannot simply be dumped".

It says Mr Arafat is a cat with nine lives, a survivor who "cannot be written off", although it notes his position is now far more precarious.

"Sharon has prevailed in his feud with Arafat," the Dutch daily writes.

The Palestinians are still left without any hope

Die Presse

In Russia, the mainstream Vremya Novostey agrees that Bush has signalled Arafat's political death knell.

However, it mocks the US strategy as unrealistic - and unoriginal.

"The only specific thing the Americans have managed to come up with is to get rid of Arafat," the paper observes. "A thought which is now as old as the man himself."

A vision

Other papers also give short shrift to the future outlined in the speech.

"George W Bush had a vision in the White House Rose Garden," Vienna's Die Presse writes. "Yasser Arafat must go and then everything will be all right in the Middle East."

But this "vision" does nothing to calm the situation, the paper adds.

Die Presse expects Israel to continue its misguided military policy and says it feels no reason to talk with Mr Arafat "after this excommunication from Washington".

"The Palestinians are still left without any hope," it observes.

Sweden's Dagens Nyheter feels the US president's "vision" is more of a "pipe dream".

Another Austrian paper, Der Standard, thinks one person is very happy with Mr Bush's speech - the Israeli prime minister.

"Ariel Sharon is naturally satisfied... because Bush has almost unconditionally adopted his own position."

The paper didn't expect Mr Bush to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but says that condemning Arafat without mapping a way forward is "astounding and disappointing".

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