European press review

The candidate of the Serbian opposition is widely seen as having won the Yugoslav presidential elections, but no-one is quite sure what comes next.

In France a growing scandal over illegal party funding casts a shadow over President Jacques Chirac.The drop in the price of oil proves welcome, but the hope is that it will drop further.

Beginning of the end?

Despite the absence of any official results for the Yugoslav elections, the overall consensus among Europe's main dailies is that the Serbian opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, has beaten the incumbent, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Hungary's Magyar Hirlap sums up the outcome of the Yugoslav elections in seven points.

First and most importantly, says the paper, "Milosevic is losing because his people have turned away from him once and for all".

Secondly, the opposition presidential candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, as the smaller evil, "was a good choice, because he has won", it says. Thirdly, the paper welcomes the fact that the opposition has kept calm so far.

Its fourth and fifth conclusions are that Milosevic has lost another sphere of influence, Montenegro, which now has - in the shape of the citizens' refusal to vote - a rejection of his Yugoslavia.

The sixth point is that the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, which joined forces with the opposition, has also won a sweeping victory.

However, the paper's last and main conclusion is that no-one knows what comes next.

"A broad range of options are possible from an open dictatorship, through a civil war to a peaceful change of the system," it says.

"Kostunica declares himself winner of the elections," says the front page of Switzerland's Neue Zuercher Zeitung.

This, the paper says, despite claims by supporters of Slobodan Milosevic that it is their candidate who is in the lead.

"Official election results have not been announced to far," it says.

Next to a photograph of a huge crowd of Serbian opposition supporters celebrating in central Belgrade, the bilingual Luxemburger Wort says that the Milosevic's government and the opposition are quarrelling over victory.

"The Belgrade regime and Serbia's opposition on Monday both claimed victory in the presidential elections," it says.

The Paris-based International Herald Tribune notes that with mounting evidence of a "sweeping triumph" by the opposition in the Yugoslav general elections, Vojislav Kostunica has claimed outright victory over Slobodan Milosevic as the country's new president.

"Even if Mr Kostunica's assertion of a first-round victory is not accepted, Sunday's elections have been a watershed for the post-war politics of Yugoslavia," the paper says.

"They will mark the beginning of the end of Mr Milosevic's years in power, which could begin to unravel quickly if the scope of his defeat is verified."

"Milosevic halts vote counting in Yugoslavia," says Spain's Diario 16.

In its editorial, the paper says "it can be expected that nothing will be the same in Serbia anymore and that Milosevic's end, essential for stabilising the turbulent Balkans, is close".

Another Madrid daily, ABC, says: "Milosevic must acknowledge his expected defeat and step down. For the good of his people, for security in the Balkans and for European stability."

Under the headline "Slobo's death throes", the Italian daily La Stampa writes: "The apparent blockage caused by two opposing victories, by two Serbias paralysed around two candidates equally rewarded by the voters was merely the last trick thought up for a few hours by Milosevic to cover up his own scorching election defeat".

Berlin's Die Tageszeitung, however, strikes a rather different tune, seeing Milosevic as strengthened by the elections, and not weakened.

It says that by calling the elections, Milosevic has succeeded in halting growing divisions within his camp and reaffirmed the loyalty of his supporters.

"The greater the lead of the opposition candidate in the opinion polls, the closer the divided Belgrade establishment rallied around its leader," the paper says.

Furthermore, it says, the elections have split the anti-Milosevic opposition.

By deciding to field its own presidential candidate instead of boycotting the elections, it says, the opposition has broken its alliance with the Montenegrin leadership, which refused to take part in the elections.

The West, too, the paper says, failed to declare the elections to be invalid.

"So Milosevic can sit back, satisfied," the paper says. "The united front of his opponents in Serbia, Montenegro and the West no longer exists."

Something rotten in Paris

The Luxembourg daily Tageblatt turns its attention to the growing corruption scandal in France after a videotape implicating President Jacques Chirac over illegal party funding was reported to have fallen into the possession of the former Socialist finance minister, Dominique-Strauss Kahn.

"The Mery affair is causing a political earthquake," the paper says in a reference to a videotaped statement by former Chirac aid Jean-Claude Mery, which Strauss-Kahn has admitted holding since 1999.

"The shock waves produced by revelations... that Dominique Strauss-Kahn had the original copy of the video is today undermining a prime minister [Lionel Jospin] whose popularity has been built on morality in politics", the paper argues.

According to the Swiss paper, Le Temps, the report that the former minister held on to the video tape was "explosive".

"Under the terms of the law, he should have passed on the information contained on the cassette to the judicial authorities who were the investigating the scandals connected with Paris City Hall," the paper writes.

Meanwhile, the French paper Liberation devotes almost its entire front page to a photo of former minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, under the headline: "DSK - Jospin's millstone".

"Now that the former minister, whose home was searched yesterday, has been implicated, the scandal is turning into one which goes to the heart of the state," the paper writes.

On the slippery slope

Madrid's El Mundo welcomes the fall of the price of oil to 30 dollars a barrel.

"Few analysts believe that the barrel will cost more than 25 dollars by next spring," the paper says.

"The task now is to accelerate this trend so that it reaches this level as soon as possible," it adds. "Now it stands at 30... Europe can provide the decisive push."

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