Posted on 04/10/2003 2:15:25 PM PDT by knighthawk
Scenes of jubilant Iraqis celebrating on the streets of Baghdad have been reported with cautious optimism in the European press. Our BBC correspondents in France, Germany and Russia - countries largely opposed to military action in Iraq - gauge the reaction.
Emma Jane Kirby - Paris
There was a time when you couldn't switch on French television or radio without hearing some outspoken critic condemning the war. Since the fall of Baghdad however, the French Government has been a little more reluctant to come forward.
In a short statement issued by the president, Jacques Chirac said he was satisfied like all democracies with the outcome in Baghdad and he added that he hoped there would be a rapid and effective end to the fighting.
But France's media suggests the government has been politically embarrassed by the warm welcome that American forces received when entering Baghdad.
French radio speaks of the unease and embarrassment of the French Government who may now be wondering if they backed the wrong horse.
The left wing newspaper, Liberation, warns that President Chirac is now threatened with isolation on the international stage. He's become, says the paper, the king of peace without a crown.
The French Government will now be desperate for the UN to take a central role in post-war Iraq, fearing if the US takes the lead it'll deliberately cut France out of reconstruction contracts for failing to back the coalition.
President Chirac may have enjoyed three-quarters of his people's support with his vociferous anti-war ticket, say the papers, but now that he's lost the diplomatic battle, will French citizens still regard him as a hero?
Nikolai Gorshkov - Moscow
There was a sense of incredulity in Moscow at first reports that the Iraqi resistance in central Baghdad suddenly crumbled.
Muscovites were still protesting as Baghdad fell Russian media and Russian politicians for that matter had somehow managed to persuade themselves that this was going to be a long protracted war and a fiercely fought one on the part of the Iraqis, especially in the street battles.
In an ironic twist the largest ever anti-war rally in Moscow was held exactly when international television channels were beaming pictures of the cheering crowds in Baghdad yesterday.
Russian media is playing down the victory and playing up reports of fierce fighting on the right bank of the Tigris river and also making the most of the looting and anarchy in Baghdad and Basra.
A lot of papers say that coalition forces are completely incapable of controlling the situation and imply that unless the United Nations takes up responsibility and installs some kind of civil administration the whole system may collapse.
Katya Adler - Berlin
The majority of Germans opposed military intervention in Iraq so there is cautious optimism expressed in most of the papers about the apparent fall of Saddam Hussein's regime
There is praise for American and British military tactics but journalists still question the reasons for going to war in the first place and newspaper editorials remind their readers that evidence of weapons of weapons of mass destruction still remains to be found in Iraq.
They say the freeing of Iraq is pointless without ensuring wider stability in the Middle East and many add gloomily that the European Union remains divided over the issue and the United Nations to a certain extent discredited.
Just around the corner from here anti-war protesters are still holding around the clock demonstrations and they say they'll remain there until American and British soldiers withdraw altogether from Iraq and there's little faith here in Germany that they are in a hurry to do so.
I'm glad to hear it. Maybe I have underestimated European media, they aren't a total loss.
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