European press review

European papers conduct a post-mortem into the oil tanker disaster off north-west Spain, the Czechs wonder what impact the Nato summit will have on Prague, the German press ponders unflattering remarks about Chancellor Schroeder, Ukrainian papers confront the mysterious death of another journalist, and Russia reports on a novel smuggling technique.

A question of Prestige

Dramatic pictures of the oil tanker Prestige sinking off the Galicia region of Spain on Tuesday fill the front pages of all the Madrid dailies. "Time bomb under the sea" is the headline in ABC, while La Razon talks of "Ecological alarm as the Prestige sinks".

In its editorial, El Pais says that "disasters like the Prestige... reveal the powerlessness of the European authorities to stop the strategies used by the oil companies and ship owners to get round the rules on safety".

In Barcelona, La Vanguardia says that "the sinking of the Prestige mainly affects Galicia, but the whole of the European Union should also feel involved".

The whole European Union should feel involved.

La Vanguardia

"The EU directives on maritime transport must be quickly introduced into domestic legal systems so ships like the Prestige are subjected to the strictest possible preventative controls," it writes.

"This is not a question of the loss of a few tonnes of barnacles, but of the collective security of the seas; and today security is an unshakable priority".

Prague faces Nato

The Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny is concerned about the effect staging the Nato summit will have on the host city, Prague.

"People are leaving Prague because of the summit but the first thing to abandon the city was common sense," writes one of the paper's commentators.

Some argue, he says, whether such meetings are really necessary - and if so, whether it would not be better to hold them in a desert to ensure participants' safety.

Others would see that as summiteers resigning themselves to defeat, and as a failure to oppose violence and evil.

According to the commentator, the Prague summit is the first step on the path towards precisely that sort of resignation.

"Prague is not a forsaken fortress in a desert but it has in fact turned into one," he says. "Both excessive security measures and people simply giving up in a psychological battle with the state authorities are to be blamed for this."

Prague inhabitants should expect certain restrictions during the summit but they should not flee and leave the town to be ruled by big shots, Lidove Noviny concludes.

Gerhard Bruening?

German papers report a row within the Social Democratic Party (SPD) - the "Red" component in the so-called "Red-Green" coalition - that has led to calls for the leftist former party leader and finance minister Oskar Lafontaine to resign from the party.

According to Hamburg's Die Welt, Lafontaine caused outrage by likening the present German chancellor and SPD chairman, Gerhard Schroeder, to Chancellor Heinrich Bruening, who presided over two years of austerity policies and growing public disorder that led to the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933 and ushered in Hitler's final rise to supreme power.

Mr Schroeder's wife Doris has called on Mr Lafontaine - dubbed "Red Oskar" by the tabloid press - to leave the SPD. "His comments are historically inaccurate and disloyal," the paper quotes Mrs Schroeder as saying.

Anyone who compares the Germany of 2002 with the Weimar Republic of 1932 has many screws loose, if not all of them.

Die Welt

While Die Welt acknowledges that Mr Schroeder is not exactly "master of the situation" at the moment, it disagrees with Mr Lafontaine's comparison.

"Germany's economy is on the slide and the government cannot cope with the problem... It is also correct to say that the winter will bring extremely bitter records in terms of unemployment and bankruptcies. But anyone who compares Germany at the end of 2002 with the Weimar Republic of 1932 has many screws loose, if not all of them."

The paper invites Mr Lafontaine to answer two simple questions. "If you were 20-years-old, would you rather live then or now? Would you rather be a pensioner then or now?"

"Schroeder may indeed be a rather bad chancellor at the moment. But, in spite of this, the downfall of the West is not going to happen," the paper concludes.

Death of a reporter

A Ukrainian news agency director, Mykhaylo Kolomiyets, has been found hanged in a Belarusian forest.

"The police are so far treating it exclusively as a suicide, although they do not conceal their doubts about it," the newspaper Den says.

The Fakty I Kommentarii tabloid interviews Mr Kolomiyets's friend and colleague, Mykhaylo Kukhar, who says "Mykhaylo would not do such a thing under any circumstances." His other colleagues agree, saying he was an even-tempered person and he liked his job.

Two years ago Ukraine was shocked by the death of opposition journalist Georgiy Honhadze, who was found beheaded in a forest outside Kiev. Accusations of official involvement persist.

Anything to declare?

The illegal trade in caviar is big business in some parts of Russia, and particularly in the Far East, and smugglers will go to great lengths.

As the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reports, earlier this week a plane took off from Magadan in the Far East, bound for southern Russia.

Among the cargo on board was a coffin. Nothing particularly bizarre about that, except that, during the flight, the coffin collapsed under the sheer weight of its contents.

Once the plane had landed safely at its destination in Krasnodar, the cargo was examined by customs officers, who discovered some 280 kilogram¿s of caviar in cardboard boxes inside the coffin, carefully stashed away beneath a consignment of bananas.

And this despite the fact that the coffin had been given the all clear, and was accompanied by an authentic death certificate.

Another caviar coffin was found a day later.

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