European press review

The Middle East crisis remains the focus of Tuesday's papers.

Today's special meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels is not expected to resolve arguments over how to handle the conflict.

And German papers debate how the country should deal with the proposed multilateral force for Lebanon.

'No hope'

Germany's Berliner Zeitung says that Tuesday's special meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels to discuss the crisis is unlikely to stop the fighting because of disagreements among European countries over how to proceed.

The British are hiding behind the Americans, the French maintain their aversion to Nato and the US, while the Germans "are torpedoing all efforts to criticise Israel in stronger terms", the daily says.

Mr Bush has provoked an unprecedented wave of anti-Americanism Le Monde

The Europeans are offering "a lot of sympathy and consolation", but "no hope", it concludes.

"The international community is shocked but incapable of intervening," Romania's Ziua agrees.

The paper sees "a tragic farce" at the United Nations, where "any attempt at explicitly condemning Israel's offensive is immediately blocked by an American 'veto'".

Instability

The French daily Le Monde reminds readers that Lebanon, Israel, Gaza and Iraq are all at war.

The myth of Israel's invincibility is evaporating before our eyes Sovetskaya Rossiya

"This is not what President George Bush promised us when US troops arrived in Baghdad in March 2003," it says.

By making Israel's policy his own, the paper argues, Mr Bush has "reduced America's political credit in the Arab world" and "provoked an unprecedented wave of anti-Americanism".

The Spanish daily El Pais believes that Israel's tactics demonstrate "blindness".

The systematic bombing of civilians will only serve to increase hatred of Israel among Arabs, "feed the international breeding grounds of Islamic fundamentalism, further destabilise the Middle East and alienate its Western allies", the paper says.

Vienna's Der Standard says that Israel should use the 48-hour suspension of air strikes in southern Lebanon as a "time for reflection" to realise that negotiations are always necessary to solve conflicts.

A "new Middle East" cannot be bombed into existence, it warns.

Russia's Sovetskaya Rossiya says that "a strategic change" in the region's power balance is emerging.

"The myth of Israel's invincibility is evaporating before our eyes," it states.

"This has created a fundamentally new situation in the Middle East".

German dilemma

Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung thinks the German government is dragging its feet too much over whether to take part in the multilateral mission planned for southern Lebanon, by reserving its decision until the force's mandate is known.

If Chancellor Angela Merkel believes that "Germany should and could defuse the conflict in the crisis region, including through military measures", the paper says, "then she should help draft the mandate".

But Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung warns that those who accuse the Berlin government of inaction have no understanding of the dilemma facing Germans in the Middle East.

Germany's dealings with Israel are "tricky", it says.

"History has still not by any means absolved Germans of their special responsibility for Israel," it says.

"Germans, above all, must ask themselves how strong their criticism of Israel can be".

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