European press review

The run-up to elections preoccupies newspapers in Spain and Russia today.

German papers are bewildered by the chancellor's reported verbal attack on his coalition partner.

And in France, a difficult summer has taken its toll on the country's leadership.

Spain's 'final straight'

Two Spanish papers approve of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's cabinet reshuffle, aimed at giving the ruling party's newly-appointed prime ministerial candidate, Mariano Rajoy, freedom to campaign for a general election in March.

La Razon sees the reshuffled cabinet as "a team well prepared to complete the legislature without shocks nor splits". It is also "fully in tune with the formidable challenge" awaiting Mr Rajoy.

This is "a government for the final straight", says Madrid's ABC.

The paper believes that "the time left until the March 2004 elections is just about enough to gauge the new cabinet's ability to co-ordinate its action with the party and with Mariano Rajoy who has been given a free hand and full party powers".

Russia's marathon

Russian President Vladimir Putin's announcement yesterday that parliamentary elections would be held on 7 December, was not greeted with in enthusiasm in the press.

"The election marathon is under way," reads the headline in Trud.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta fears that the campaign will be marred with "acts of terrorism", as a commuter train was blown up on the day campaigning began.

"What happened was a shocking reminder of 1999 when the State Duma election also began with an act of terrorism," it says.

"It is exactly three years ago today that a block of flats was blown up in Buynaksk, killing 62 people."

The paper recalls that after that attack, blocks of flats were blown up in Moscow and Volgodonsk at three-day intervals, killing 300 people.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta believes that there is something to be learned from North Korean deputies, who have "fitted their autumn session into a single day, managing to hold elections to all the agencies of the supreme authority".

"Mind you, this is no surprise given the atmosphere of unanimity and universal consensus that prevails in that country," it adds.

'No love-match'

Germany's Red-Green continues to be no more than a coalition of convenience Austria's Der Standard

Recent alleged remarks by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder' has left some German-language newspapers confused over his view of the junior coalition partner.

Mr Schroeder reportedly criticised the Greens for speaking out of turn on the country's Iraq policy, saying the incident made him "want to vomit".

Germany's Die Welt warns that the chancellor will find "it difficult to govern at all with such a tone, let alone until 2010". Only recently the chancellor and his Green foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, had proclaimed their wish to govern together until 2010.

The remark shows that the coalition of Greens and the Social Democratic Party is not "a love-match" despite Gerhard Schroeder's promise to continue it, echoes Austria's Der Standard.

The paper believes the incident shows that for the chancellor "Red-Green continues to be no more than a coalition of convenience".

Summer of discontent

A commentary in France's Le Monde highlights divisions within the French cabinet.

Jacques Chirac is acting like a misbehaved schoolboy working twice as hard to make amends France's Nouvel Observateur

The health and political crisis brought about by the heatwave "has caused the government to lose its dynamic as a team", the writer says.

Mutual criticisms between ministers "are no longer just murmured".

"All this creates an impression of disorder which Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin is struggling to dispel."

According to a commentator in the Nouvel Observateur, President Jacques Chirac is also trying to smooth over the events of a difficult summer and make amends for his "deafening silence throughout August when elderly people were dying in their thousands".

He is acting like "a misbehaved schoolboy working twice as hard to make amends", the paper says.

It describes Mr Chirac as visiting the grieving families of firemen killed in woodland fires and inviting himself at the last minute to the funeral of elderly heatwave victims whose bodies had lain unclaimed.

"This flurry of activity is very revealing of the president's embarrassment. But it will take a lot more than this to make the public forget a much too long summer absence."

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