European Press Review: Indonesia's Fight Against Terrorism

It's a utopian idea that the war against terrorism can ever be won opined Stockholm's Dagens Nyheter paper. But nothing is more urgent than reducing the risk of terrorist attacks it wrote. People have to continue riding buses in Tel Aviv, be able to go to the theatre in Moscow, shop in London, fly to Washington or stay in Hotels in Jakarta without fearing that they will be torn to pieces.

According to the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Indonesia remains a powder keg. The country's large economic, social and ethnic problems together with the fact that the majority of people are Muslims creates a volatile mix, in the paper’s opinion. The latest bomb attack proves the potential for terrorism on the island nation has not diminished and cements a picture of instability.

Rome's Corriere Della Sera said Osama Bin Laden's terror network is behind the attacks. It wrote that Arab money is supporting Asian militants that are waging a holy war or Jihad in South East Asia ever since the Bali bomb attack in October 2002. The only surprise was that a new attack was expected in Africa or the United States, not Asia.

The Financial Times of London agreed, saying the belief that South East Asian Islam was milder and less dangerous than the uncompromising versions of the religion found in the Middle East was dangerously naive. Asians were involved in the atrocities of September 11, 2001 and the bomb attack in Bali. "This latest blast will depress those who thought Indonesia, belatedly jolted into action after Bali was starting to overcome the problem of terror," the paper added.

The ongoing heat wave that has caused drought and bush fires across Europe is blamed on global warming by some European dailies. Parisian daily Liberation said only when there is no denying the suspicious changes to the Earth will the doubting Thomases believe the environmentalists warnings. And what high price the merciless blue skies will have to pay then, warned the paper.

London's the Guardian said on Wednesday there was no doubt that the current spell of hot, humid weather coiled around the Northern Hemisphere – is having a devastating consequences for the globe. The paper noted that evidence increasingly points to a weather system shaped more and more not by nature but by humanity. Yet bizarrely, the weight of evidence required for policy makers around the world to act decisively is not great enough for the world's greatest polluter America - which withdrew from the Kyoto protocol designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The paper wrote America should realize there are many ways to tackle climate change but ignoring is not one of them.

However, Berlin's Die Welt is more skeptical – the editorial writers spoke to an old vintner from the Moselle region who showed them that floods and heat waves have been recorded in his region since the 1820's. The latest heat, according to the paper, is nothing new and instead points to the possibility of 2003 being a great year for wine.