'The world holds its breath'
2004-11-02 15:26
Paris - Europe's newspapers on Tuesday voiced anxiety and dread as they mulled the future of America, Europe and the world according to who wins the cliffhanger US presidential vote, dubbed the "mother of all elections."
"The world holds its breath," says Italy's La Repubblica, as American voters were set to head to the polls to choose between incumbent George W Bush and his Democratic challenger John Kerry.
Austria's popular Krone daily warned "the mother of all elections" was set to throw "our world either into a calmer future or into new military adventures".
"Good luck, America," says Berlin's left-wing Tageszeitung above an image of a slot machine. "American voters today decide their future and that of the entire world."
Papers across the continent voiced fears of a repeat of the vote-counting debacle during the equally close 2000 presidential race whose result was delayed for five weeks until the Supreme Court finally decided Bush was the victor.
The Bild daily in Germany jested that foreign leaders would vote, if they could. Backing the "cowboy" (Bush) are Italian and British prime ministers Silvio Berlusconi and Tony Blair, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Counting on Kerry's indulgence
It even put German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the Bush column, arguing that the US leader helped the anti-war chancellor get re-elected in 2002, and "that could work again in 2006".
For the "gentleman" (Kerry), the paper listed Blair's wife Cherie, Pope John Paul II, French President Jacques Chirac, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
The latter "is counting on the indulgence of Kerry, who was against the war", Bild said.
The Flemish-language Belgian business magazine De Tijd said bin Laden's menacing video address to US voters last week was aimed at boosting the incumbent's chances. "With Bush in the White House, al-Qaeda doesn't need a propaganda department. The American army is taking care of (al-Qaeda's) recruitment."
The Moscow daily Vremia Novostei offered its own twist: "An invisible revolution has occurred in Russian foreign policy: For the first time the Kremlin backs the Republicans. ... Our experts believe that the pragmatic Republicans are preferable for Russia, while the Democrats keep giving us conferences on human rights."
France's left-leaning Liberation, noting that the United States had been spared a pre-election "October surprise" terror attack akin to the Madrid bombings in March, wrote that the election would surely see other surprises.
"If there is a 'November 2 surprise', it will come from the legions of new voters, most of them young, who have perhaps escaped the notice of pollsters. Or from the mobilisation of voters who in previous years stayed home," it said.