European press review

Germany's apparently resurgent far right, and what to do about it, provoke much debate in Friday's papers. Elsewhere, George W. Bush's nomination as Republican candidate for the US presidency fails to impress.

The German press continues the debate on whether the government should ban the far-right National Democratic Party, or NPD, after last week's Duesseldorf bombing which wounded several Jewish immigrants.

A commentary in the Frankfurter Rundschau says it is high time for a ban on a party which it says is racist, anti-Semitic and engages in propaganda aimed at denying human rights.

The government is in fact under an obligation to ban the NPD, the paper says.

Far from being merely symbolic, such a move "would unmistakably define the boundaries of political freedom for everyone, including the grey area of those who secretly harbour sympathy for the extreme right but still fancy they are smack in the middle of society".

The Berliner Zeitung asks why the youth of the former East Germany seems so attracted to the far right, and finds that high unemployment in the east is not the only reason.

It quotes research carried out by a Hanover institute which blames neo-Nazi sympathies on the "higher incidence of domestic violence and an authoritarian style of upbringing" in the eastern states.

"The difficult social situation in the east and lack of experience of other cultures" is only "half the explanation", the paper quotes a researcher as saying. The problem also calls for "a broad social discussion about upbringing and tolerance".

The Swiss Le Temps welcomes the fact that "by publicly voicing alarm at the racist violence, Germany has broken a taboo".

"Xenophobia is only the most visible manifestation of the phenomenon of extremism," the paper says.

It is true that 40% of such crimes do occur in the east, which accounts for only 19 per cent of the German population, the paper says.

But, it adds, it is also true that "people in the west have for years hidden behind the statistics to salve their consciences".

Now "the taboo has crumbled to dust" and "indignant voices are increasingly making themselves heard", it concludes.

'George the compassionate'

"The enthronement of George the Compassionate" is the title of an editorial in Madrid's El Mundo on George W. Bush's "unsurprising" confirmation as the Republican Party's presidential candidate.

"There was more advertising than ideology" in Bush's message throughout his party's primaries, the paper notes.

It says that his record as governor of Texas "shows very little compassionate conservatism", and that "his hand did not shake on signing any of the 134 death warrants of his gubernatorial career".

"Lacking a specific ideology, with the shortest CV in United States history and an avowed contempt for all things intellectual, Bush resembles a 20-year-younger replica of the Ronald Reagan elected in 1980," the paper says.

Switzerland's Basler Zeitung notes that there has been a marked change of tone at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia.

US vice-presidential candidate Richard Cheney "used his speech at the party convention to roundly attack President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore", the paper notes.

The "gloves are now off", it says, adding that Cheney's attacks were in stark contrast to the "positive" tone at the start of the convention when delegates were warned by the Bush camp to avoid "negative" campaigning against the White House incumbent.

No end in sight to Iraq sanctions

Ten years after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the leading French daily Le Monde sees little chance of sanctions against Baghdad being lifted in the near future.

It says America and Iraq appear to be engaged in a "dialogue of the deaf", with Saddam Husain willing to go to any lengths to hang on to power, and Washington determined to see him go but with no idea how to achieve this.

The paper's commentator adds that the situation calls the whole idea of sanctions into question.

"There is no reason to believe that, if the sanctions against civilian goods were lifted, Iraq would enter a new era of democracy and openness," it says.

"What is certain, on the other hand, is that the embargo has not brought about the fall of the regime," it adds.

What hope for a multiethnic Kosovo?

Germany's Die Tageszeitung deplores the absence of an effective international strategy to counter the daily round of violence in Kosovo, in which three Romanies were the latest victims on Thursday night.

"So far there has been no effective help for the people who are losing their lives every day in an atmosphere of hatred and vengeance," the paper says. "The three Romanies won't have been the last victims in Kosovo."

Part of the problem, the paper says, is the widening discrepancy between what Nato wants and the reality in Kosovo.

"Nato Secretary-General Robertson," it writes, "still wants to defend a multiethnic society in Kosovo, if necessary with violence, while representatives of the ethnic groups see coexistence as a medium-term goal, at best".