By Andrew Hammond
DUBAI (Reuters) - His apology was late and the damage done, said Arab and European commentators on Saturday, reacting to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"While he (Rumsfeld) has been in charge, murder, torture and humiliation were heaped on Iraqi detainees almost as a matter of course," the Saudi daily Arab News commented.
"Rumsfeld's apology came too late," said Jordanian analyst Hani Hourani. "I believe Rumsfeld should resign because the torture reflected a widespread policy adopted by the U.S. army in Iraq and maybe Afghanistan as well."
Rumsfeld took responsibility on Friday for abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops and offered his "deepest apology" to victims during U.S. Senate hearings broadcast live in the Arab world as well as the United States.
But Rumsfeld said he would not resign just to satisfy his political enemies.
Many Arabs and Europeans, however, said he should quit.
Reinhard Buetikofer, chairman of Germany's Green Party, a junior partner in the government, said: "The minister who is responsible for such things must resign: Mr. Rumsfeld."
VISIONS OF SADDAM
And Kuwait, a close U.S. ally in the Gulf, said the abuses by American soldiers recalled the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"For us in Kuwait these (abuses) mean a lot of things, and recall the brutal acts by Saddam Hussein's regime in the same prison, Abu Ghraib, which held many Kuwaiti detainees," Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Salem al-Sabah was quoted as saying.
Arabic newspapers, from Egypt's opposition al-Wafd to Saudi Arabia's semi-official Okaz, showed pictures of Rumsfeld looking troubled with his hands over his face.
The Arab News dismissed Rumsfeld's order for a review of the case.
"Rumsfeld's suggestion that an independent inquiry be set up into what happened is a waste of time, and Iraqis simply do not have time to waste," it said.
"If he resigns without fuss, perhaps he may begin to redeem himself by making a tiny contribution to the restoration of America's good name in the world."
Underscoring emotions in the Arab world, al-Wafd had a picture of a dead Iraqi child with the caption: "The new Mongols massacre the children of Iraq before the eyes of the world."
Of 60,000 respondents to a poll on the Web site of leading Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, some 87 percent said the United States would be unable to improve its image among Arabs and Muslims.
"I used to agree with the American campaign in Iraq, now I'm very reluctant, I don't know if they are fulfilling the purpose they are meant to fulfil anymore," said Suliman Buhaimed of the American University of Kuwait.
Rumsfeld failed to impress ordinary Iraqis, who suffered three-decades of brutal Saddam rule before insurgents locked horns with U.S.-led occupying forces after last year's invasion. "Apology is not enough. What they have committed against the Iraqis won't be erased from our memory," Taha Duraib Hussein, 41, a shopowner in Baghdad, said.
BROKEN TRUST
"By committing these atrocities, the Americans have broken the trust between them and the Iraqis and it's very difficult to build it again," Salah Wadie, 30, said.
President Bush, seeking re-election in November, sought to repair the U.S. image by pledging on Arab television last week that Americans behind the prisoner abuse and killings of detainees would be punished.
A number of European newspapers said the scandal signaled the failure of Bush's Iraq policy.
"If Rumsfeld takes responsibility for what happened in Iraqi prisons, as he declared yesterday in the Senate, his only possibility...is to resign," leading Spanish daily El Pais said.
French left-wing daily Liberation said: "The torture was not the work of a handful of corrupt criminals ... They were really the disciplined cogs of a system ignorant of the Geneva Convention (on treatment of prisoners)."
(Additional reporting by Baghdad, Cairo, Amman, Madrid, Paris, Kuwait)