GERMANY

Frankfurter Allgemeine, Frankfurt, April 1: Once it became clear who would be moving into the White House in January, angry environmentalists the world over made no secret of their dismay.
Negotiating with George W. Bush would be much the same as taking on Exxon, they said. And they were right.
Mr. Bush has now consigned what few tender green shoots he allowed to germinate while on the campaign trail to the place his friends and patrons always wanted them -- namely to the scrap heap of history.
Rookie's brinkmanship: During his first visit to the new president in Washington, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder doubtlessly hoped that Mr. Bush's unequivocal threat to withdraw from the 1997 global climate treaty was no more than a rookie's brinkmanship.
While this interpretation cannot be ruled out entirely, the language Mr. Bush used to dismiss the Kyoto Protocol leaves no one in any doubt that the United States intends to pull out of the negotiations on international climate protection.
Instead, Mr. Bush has chosen to give absolute priority to the tottering American economy and its so-called "energy crisis," which in reality is an energy wastage crisis.
Climate protection, or so Mr. Bush and his aides believe, is an obstacle to the solution of both these problems.
ARGENTINA
Clarin, Buenos Aires, April 2: Defeating AIDS is one of the main challenges of modern society, which for years has brought together the scientific community to discuss its investigations and discoveries. Preparations are now under way in Buenos Aires for an international gathering of leading AIDS specialists, which will provide a renewed opportunity to deepen exchanges among countries and discuss local scientific advances.
Underlying disease: Buenos Aires will be host July 8-11 to a World AIDS Congress, the first gathering of its kind to be undertaken in Latin American, a region in which some 1.4 billion people are believed to be carriers of the HIV virus. The first international conferences on AIDS began in the 1980s at a time when the epidemic was just beginning. Experts concur, that since that decade, great advancements have been made in understanding the underlying disease.
Nonetheless, still much remains to be done to improve global strategies to fight the illness and, above all, to ensure that advances achieved by the scientific community are made available to all those who are infected.
EGYPT
Al-Akhbar, Cairo, April 3: There should be someone who has to explain to President George Bush's administration the nature of the boiling situation because it seems that this administration does not realize well enough the true nature of the issues in the Middle East. Therefore, the meeting between Bush and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on April 2 earns special importance. Otherwise, Washington is risking the loss of all its friends in the region because of its special relations with Israel, which have yielded a wide range of criticism.
Aggressive statements: President Mubarak will certainly explain the deteriorated, complicated and grave situation in the Middle East and the risk of a regional war ignited by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, especially as he goes on with his aggressive statements against the Syrians and the Lebanese.
If Washington does not quickly correct its approach in its Middle East policy, the intricate situation in the region could to rapidly accelerate and explode at any time.
SOUTH AFRICA
The Citizen, Johannesburg, April 3: Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav demagogue, is about to discover that the ghosts of his iron-fist rule will haunt him for years to come.
NATO has blamed him for the flight of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes in Kosovo and for the deaths of perhaps thousands.
Accountability: It would be a mistake to surrender to a let bygones-be-bygones theory of diminishing accountability. Ask Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal if the pain of the Holocaust passes with the years.
For Africa, there is also a clear message. This region isn't without despots and their allies.
Milosevic's arrest serves notice on all tyrants and their henchmen. Eventually their time will come.