DATE=05/06/02

TYPE=EDITORIAL DIGEST

TITLE=MONDAY'S EDITORIALS

NUMBER=6-125658

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

INTERNET=YES

EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: The overwhelming victory for Jacques Chirac, the incumbent President of France, trouncing a right-wing challenge is already attracting editorial comment in the United States. Other topics handled by editorial writers include the Middle East; the U-S farm bill; and a major change of philosophy on cloning for Senator Orin Hatch. There are other comments on Africa's problems; China's view of Taiwan; and why North Korea is again reaching out and trying to improve relations. Now, here is __________ with a closer look and some quotes in today's U-S Editorial Digest.

TEXT: The incumbent president of France has turned back a right wing challenge from Jean-Marie Le Pen, by winning about 82 percent of the vote in yesterday's (Sunday)French presidential election. Several American papers, while expressing approval, are apprehensive about the future. The New York Times says in part:

VOICE: President Chirac's mandate is weaker than meets the eye. Millions of his opponents on the left who voted for him … may rally in sufficient numbers behind the post-Jospin Socialist Party in June's parliamentary elections. These are arguably more important under France's unwieldy hybrid political system, a cross between the parliamentary model and America's presidential one. A sense of where France is headed politically will have to await the June voting.

TEXT: The Wall Street Journal ventures that:

VOICE: The much more significant story now is whether yesterday's election victor … can use the jolt of [Mr.] Le Pen's earlier showing to shake France out of its political inertia and economic decline. … France has traditionally changed … through jolts and convulsions. Last month with [Mr.] Le Pen's surprise showing, France suffered a mini-trauma. His brief time in the sun [signaled] …the break up of the French left. That disarray has now made Jacques Chirac the man of the hour.

VOICE: And in USA Today, the national daily published outside Washington worries that:

VOICE: …the groundswell of discontent that propelled a nationalist demagogue to France's presidential runoff isn't likely to prove as easy to defeat. Nor is the concern confined to France. Anti-immigrant parties have elbowed their way into governing coalitions in Austria, Italy and Denmark.

TEXT: Turning to the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is in Washington for talks Tuesday with President Bush. The Washington Times, sums up:

VOICE: The immediate challenge for Mr. Bush, a senior official told reporters Saturday, is to persuade Israel that "it's in their long-term interest to deal with [Chairman] Arafat, no matter how reprehensible he might be." This is typical of the mindset of European leaders' approach to the peace process … and the Clinton administration's modus operandi when it came to dealing with Mr. Arafat and his continued violations of signed agreements with Israel. It's sad that Messers Bush and Powell, unable …to stand up to terrorists like Mr. Arafat … browbeat Mr. Sharon and Israel into making new concessions.

TEXT: Today's (Monday) Providence [Rhode Island] Journal laments that the truth about the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp will never be known, now that a U-N probe is cancelled. In Texas, today's Fort Worth Star Telegram holds out hope that the pending Middle East peace conference may improve the situation, and at the least, possibly extend the current lull in fighting.

Domestically, the favorite topic is the agriculture bill about to pass Congress, which many papers feel is poorly constructed. Summing up its feelings, The San Jose [California] Mercury News exclaims:

VOICE: The farm bill passed by the House … last week is lousy economics, a disaster for trade policy, a lost opportunity for the environment and an insult to taxpayers … The bill is a product of a Senate-House conference committee whose modus operandi was to preserve the worst of what the Senate and House previously had done.

TEXT: Equally upset, the Chicago Tribune, writing from the midst of farm country, complains about the 709-percent increase over current spending, then adds: "It is an inexcusably expensive welfare bill for corporate farming, coming at a time when the federal government is heading back into deficit spending.

On the debate over cloning and a reversal of position by a major adversary of abortion, Utah's Senator Orrin Hatch, today's Pittsburgh Press comments:

VOICE: It may not be as historic a gesture as Richard Nixon going to China, but a prominent pro-life senator's endorsement of human cloning for medical research is still significant. In endorsing so-called therapeutic cloning, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah may have given such research new political momentum. The conservative Republican ... has disappointed many of his fellow abortion opponents by backing federal support for therapeutic cloning.

TEXT: The Des Moines [Iowa] Register sees an inconsistency in Senator Hatch's reasoning.

VOICE: [With his decision, Senator] Hatch is sending the message that life doesn't really begin at conception if the ends are favorable to finding cures for Alzheimer's or other diseases for which stem-cell research holds promise.

TEXT: Internationally, the problems of Africa, including famine, AIDS and dictatorial governments are again the focus of several editorials. On the latter problem, The Washington Post says Latin American governments recently gave a good example of how to support democracy:

VOICE: … democratic leaders collectively … put pressure on coup leaders in Venezuela and on Cuba's dictator. But Africa's leaders need to demonstrate that they mean to live up to their rhetoric. Zimbabwe suggests that they may not. … If Africa's new partnership means anything, it is that the continent's leaders must tell Mr. Mugabe to stop terrorizing his country and call fresh elections. But Africa's leaders have equivocated.

TEXT: Today's Seattle Times is pleased that Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu is in its city to get an honorary degree from the University of Washington, as he calls attention to the need for more money to fight AIDS in South Africa and all over the continent. And as regards famine, today's Detroit [Michigan] Free Press is worried that "Drought and flooding over the last few years have devastated crops in Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, and starvation is spreading.

Turning to Asian affairs, Charleston's [South Carolina] Post and Courier is pleased that a tougher Bush White House policy toward China's claims to Taiwan has: "… rescued [U-S] Taiwan policy from the dangerous ambiguity introduced by former President Bill Clinton during his state visit to China in … 1998."

On New York's Long Island, Newsday is pleased that talks will soon be resuming between North Korea and the United States. The paper feels the worsening famine there forced Pyongyang's hand.

On the topic of domestic security, The Milwaukee [Wisconsin] Journal cites the recent arrest of "hundreds of employees with access to high-security areas at 15 U-S airports" on a variety of charges, including lying about criminal convictions, and overstaying visas, as an indication that airport security still has much improvement to be made.

And on the debate as to whether commercial airline pilots should be allowed to carry guns, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says no, that it remains "a problematic idea," that could do "more harm than good." But in Oklahoma City, The Daily Oklahoman says it is "Time for Guns in the Cockpits," pointing out that the largest pilots union supports the idea.

And that ends this editorial sampling of Monday's U-S press.

NEB/ANG/FC