BBC News, UK
May 23, 2003

Germany’s Berliner Zeitung casts a wry smile between the lines at the timing of the resolution.

“Now the great and mighty of this world can shake hands with a smile at the coming St Petersburg summit and the G8 meeting in Evian,” it says.

“Even though the smiles of the French, Germans and Russians may still be a little strained”.

While Germany’s paramount interest now is to heal the rift in relations with America as swiftly as possible, the paper says, France and Russia needed to “align themselves with Washington” in order to secure their “billions invested in Iraq”.

Hamburg’s Die Welt meanwhile expects the UN vote and the perceived easing of tensions between the United States and “old Europe” to save Nato from drifting into irrelevance.

‘Sympathetic neutrality’

An editorial in leading French daily Le Monde says that consistency would have required France to oppose the resolution. But the fact that it voted in favour is easily explainable.

“No-one would wish to convey the impression of regretting Saddam Hussein’s downfall,” it says.

Even a French abstention at the Security Council “would have been perceived by Washington as an unfriendly act”.

And France, it points out, “needs the support, or at least the sympathetic neutrality”, of President Bush to ensure a successful G8 summit in Evian next month.

UN ‘irrelevance’

The London Times says President Chirac has a long way to go before he can assuage Washington’s anger, but the vote for the resolution shows that he has “at last understood the demands of pragmatism”.

President Bush, the paper believes, will be more ready to throw his weight behind concerted attempts to address international problems “if he believes that America’s allies and partners are willing to put aside past quarrels and accusations over Iraq”.

“Conquest endorsed” is the headline in Barcelona’s El Periodico. “No doubt,” the paper says, “it was necessary to end the economic embargo in order to start rebuilding Iraq.”

But the paper finds it “deplorable” that the rest of the world should have to legitimate the country’s occupation by endorsing what it calls “an illegal war”.

In Austria, an unenthusiastic Die Presse takes issue with the French foreign minister’s proclamation that “the United Nations is back”.

The occupying forces will hold “all powers of decision” while the contribution from any UN special envoy to Baghdad will be considered “irrelevant”, according to the paper.

‘Honest differences’

The Russian press sees the UN vote as a chance for everyone to move forward despite their differences on Iraq.

Izvestiya says that “in the Kremlin the realisation has dawned that ‘it’s time to put Iraq behind us’.”

It says officials are now using a new phrase -“honest differences”

– in speaking of the divide with the US over Iraq.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta points to the collapse of the anti-war coalition. “The so-called peace camp – the force that opposed the USA just before and during the war in Iraq – is history.”

Meanwhile, Gazeta wonders if Russia’s support for the UN resolution was prompted by a desire to recoup money lost as a result of defunct oil contracts.

“According to observers, Moscow supported the resolution in exchange for American guarantees that $8bn of Iraqi debt would be paid back to Russia,” it says.

But it reports that Russian oil companies are “unenthusiastic about the lifting of sanctions.

“No-one believes in the restoration of our country’s positions in Iraq,” the paper asserts.