Military

DATE=04/25/02

TYPE=WORLD OPINION ROUNDUP

TITLE=MIDDLE EAST

NUMBER=6-125646

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

INTERNET=YES

EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: The world press continues to focus on the troubled Middle East, where a brief lull in intense fighting between Israelis and Palestinians has been broken late in the week by more killing. There is also a good deal of interest in the visit by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to President George Bush's Texas ranch Thursday. We get a sampling now from V-O-A's ___________ in this week's World Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: The following is an excerpt from a prominent columnist:

VOICE: It has been exactly 54 years since the Deir Yassin massacre and now the Jenin disaster has been added to the tragedy-laden Palestinian calendar, with many signs that Jenin will join Deir Yassin as an edifice of the Palestinian national ethos . The bi-ethnic entity that exists over all Mandatory Palestine has been consolidated as a result of the events of April two-thousand two, and the fiction of Oslo's indirect occupation has faded away with the occupation of the Palestinian Authority's territories and the destruction of its institutions.

TEXT: A far more critical commentary appears in another Israeli paper from Tel Aviv, Yediot Aharonot.

VOICE: The P-A [Palestinian Authority] which replaced the rule of the elders and that of the occupation's officers, has been totally destroyed before it could stabilize. It knows no law, no tradition that shapes society, not even institutionalized arbitrariness. Israel's neighbors have returned to a primitive condition, as in 'Lord of the Flies" - - to pre-civilization, when violence was the master. Those developments do not come as a surprise. Everybody knew that [Palestinian Chairman Yasser] Arafat abandoned the responsibility that had been conferred to him. . Israel must separate [from the Palestinians] and leave them alone.

TEXT: Moving on to comments on the Saudi-U-S leaders meeting at the president's Texas ranch, we read in Jedda Arab News:

VOICE: Observers believe that the Saudi crown prince's main objective is to provide [President] Bush with some clear insight, directly and frankly, on the present situation in the Middle East... The crown prince will relay to the ... president the Arab agreement for a comprehensive peace plan and normalization of relations with Israel...

TEXT: Turning to the London-based pan-Arabic paper, Al Sharq Al-Awsat, owned by the Saudis, we read:

VOICE: We hope, however, that the .Crown Prince shows pictures, documents and videotapes to President Bush, which he had not yet seen when he said that [Israeli Prime Minister] Sharon was a man of peace.

TEXT: Moving over to Western Europe, we pause in Britain, where London's The Guardian editorialized:

VOICE: As the gunfire subsides, quieter, moderate voices are heard once more, looking for ways to stop it happening again. In this context, the Palestinians undoubtedly now see Jenin as an enormous stick with which to beat the Israeli military machine that literally crushed them. They have good cause for outrage. And Israel has no good ground to continue to try to block the already belated U-N Mission .

TEXT: Across the channel, the French daily Les Echos from Paris has this view of the present situation.

VOICE: It is a fact. Possibly the only one which can be proven at this point: there is nothing left standing in the refugee camp of Jenin. How many people died.and under what circumstances? Almost a week after Tsahal's [Editors: sorry, no further identification (possibly the Israeli Defense Forces commander???) withdrawal from the camp, the battle of Jenin is raging on the diplomatic and media front, aggravating just a bit more the Middle East conflict.

TEXT: In Germany's south, Munich's well-known Suededeutsche Zeitung has a more Israeli-friendly view.

VOICE: [During his visit to Jenin,] U-N special envoy Roed-Larsen did not pay attention to a large part of the camp that was not destroyed. [He] . has not visited with the victims of suicide bombings once since the start of the intifada. For these reasons, Israel considered it unjust and biased to make the special envoy a member of the U-N investigative commission that is supposed to look into what happened in Jenin. . the Israeli government is also demanding that terrorism and military experts are part of the team. If the U-N is interested in a balanced investigation, Secretary General Kofi Annan must agree.

TEXT: Quickly on to Russia now, where in Moscow we read in the youth-oriented daily Moskovskiy Komsomolets:

VOICE: The Israeli 'invasion' of Palestinian territories caught the Bush administration unawares, even though it came after the visits to the Middle East by the C-I-A's Director [George] Tenet and, more recently, by Vice President Cheney. . The trouble with the high-placed emissaries is that they, rather than looking for a solution to problems, tried to 'park' them for as long as it took to punish the Baghdad dictator.Could the United States really stop the Israeli invasion? Of course, it could, but not after [Prime Minister] Sharon's tanks and bulldozers rolled over Palestinian lands.

TEXT: Turning to Asia, the huge Japanese daily Asahi, published in Tokyo, observes:

VOICE: The Bush administration's peace diplomacy toward the Middle East appears to be going astray. In fact, Secretary of State Powell's recent 'unsuccessful' peace mission had been 'mission impossible' from the beginning. The administration's peace messages to Israel and the Palestinians have been far from consistent. Will President Bush's meeting with Saudi Prince Abdullah in his Texas home .become an important turning point in the quest for a cease-fire and Middle East peace?

TEXT: On that note, we conclude this brief sampling of foreign press comment on the current situation in the Middle East.

NEB/ANG/SAB