European press review

European press review

The assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic features prominently on the front pages of Thursday's press, with tributes to his achievements, but also foreboding about the future of a region with a history of political volatility.

The headline in the Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti says it all: "Prime minister shot dead in broad daylight near government building - shot in the heart."

The paper carries a statement by the leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia and former Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica.

"Djindjic and I disagreed on many issues," Mr Kostunica said. "We had many differences of opinion, but I condemn any kind of violence and terrorism in the strongest possible terms."

A leader with many enemies

Il Sole 24 Ore

"Gunned down!" is the headline in Belgrade's Vecernje Novosti. Mr Djindjic, it says, was shot with a rifle of such a large calibre that not even a bullet-proof vest would have saved him.

In Spain, El Pais sees the murder as "the explosive culmination of the cycle of political violence which has characterised the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia".

Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore describes Mr Djindjic as "a leader with many enemies".

Germany's Die Welt notes that gunshots in the Balkans tend to make history.

Zoran Djindjic, it says, "stood for a political model that was supposed to join the future of Serbia with the Americans, with Nato and with the European Union, both internally and externally".

Because Serbia remains the leading power in south-eastern Europe, his death, it believes, has implications well beyond the country and its immediate surroundings.

In Spain too, El Periodico speaks of "bleak prospects for Balkan reconstruction".

Hungary's Magyar Hirlap says the Djindjic government's efforts to tackle organised crime, and this assassination, it believes, "was a show of force to demonstrate who really rules Serbia".

If tough action is not taken swiftly, it warns, the country will be "as good as handed over to the (underworld) gangs", and "Europe's very own Colombia may emerge on Hungary's borders".

'No natural successor'

Germany's Berliner Zeitung says hope has been dealt a blow with Mr Djindjic's death.

He may not have been popular among Serbs, it concedes, but "they knew that Djindjic was the hope of the West, and this ravaged country needs the West's help to rebuild itself".

The great problem now, the paper points out, is that "there is no natural successor... nobody able to pick up Djindjic's thread without a break."

A brutal reminder of the fragility of the peace process in a Balkans exhausted by 10 years of war

Le Temps

The Swiss Tribune De Geneve sees the killing as bad news for the European and American leaders who had built special ties with the slain prime minister.

Zoran Djindjic's willing co-operation with the tribunal in The Hague, it says, reflected the fact that he saw "submission to international justice as an obligatory rite of passage, not just to secure necessary loans but to mark both the end of a tragic sequence of events and Serbia's return to the common fold".

But now his death "has thrown such endeavours into confusion", the paper points out, and has "confirmed the instability of the new institutions, the fragility of the gains made, and the persistence of the habits that characterised the Milosevic era".

Power vacuum

Still in Geneva, Le Temps calls the killing "a brutal reminder of the fragility of the peace process in a Balkans exhausted by 10 years of war".

It came as political and institutional balances were being rebuilt through the creation of the new state of Serbia and Montenegro, it points out, and just after Vojislav Kostunica, whom it calls "the last high-ranking opponent of co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal", had stepped down as federal president.

"The supporters of the status quo," the paper says, "took advantage of the situation... to violently assert their total rejection of change."

The Serbs, it warns, "are in a dangerous power vacuum, and - now more than ever - must remember how they were able to unite peacefully to get rid of Slobodan Milosevic."

"Old Yugoslavia comes brutally to life and slays Djindjic," reads the headline in the Spanish El Mundo.

The assassination, the paper says, "brings to mind the murderous last throes of the Milosevic regime". And despite what the paper calls "the grave difficulties" facing Serbia, "few people would claim today that the Milosevic era was preferable to that of Kostunica, Djindjic and Djukanovic".

Will his successors be able to keep the republic under control, avert chaos, and prevent the return to power of the nationalists?

Izvestiya

The killing, the paper says, "reminds us yet again that, after the war, the hardest thing is to win the peace," and that "the totalitarian hydra has many heads".

Russia's Vremya Novostey says Mr Djindjic "made mistakes and sometimes made unacceptable compromises. However, over the last two years, he showed himself to be a firm supporter of reforms".

Also in Russia, Izvestiya sees the loss of Mr Djindjic as "a dreadful blow for Serbian democrats and Westernisers".

His greatest achievement, it argues, was that he kept the obedience of the top army ranks, who had enjoyed colossal influence in Milosevic's time.

Neither the handover of the country's former leaders to The Hague, nor rapprochement with the West, nor the effective loss of Kosovo, nor Montenegro's departure gave rise to rebellion in the security forces.

"Who four years ago would have thought that the Serbian generals would end up so submissive, and that they would meekly serve the new democratic authorities?" the Russian daily asks.

"Now, everything may change. Will Djindjic's successors be able to keep the republic under control, avert chaos, and prevent the return to power of the nationalists?"

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