BRITAIN

BRITAIN
The Times, London, Nov. 16: For some, Colin Powell's resignation will be presented as the removal of the last "civilized" figure in the Bush administration with whom Europeans could feel comfortable doing business. Others will contend that Gen. Powell ended an otherwise distinguished public career in failure. He was unable, it will be said, to prevent George W. Bush from embarking on his intervention in Iraq. He then damaged his reputation by an appearance at the United Nations during which he made claims about Iraq's efforts to conceal weapons of mass destruction that now look somewhat less credible than when he offered them.
All this is too simplistic. Gen. Powell has proved to be the figure in the Bush administration most fluent with audiences outside America. That is not, however, to conclude that his private views were the same as those of his French or German counterparts.
Indo-Pakistani relations
His tenure must also be evaluated in the round and not solely by reference to Iraq. Powell and Richard Armitage, his tireless deputy, have not received the credit they are due for their efforts to soothe Indo-Pakistani relations. The secretary of state has also helped the U.S. to come to a more coherent view of China and seen off some in the Republican Party who were almost obsessed with the notion that Beijing could be only a rival and a menace, not an ally and a partner, to Washington. He helped the president to frame a new U.S. approach to Africa, and especially AIDS, which it is still unfashionable to recognize.
His exit will not transform the character of American foreign policy. He himself observed in an interview last week that Mr. Bush's "aggressive" foreign policy would continue, not least because that was what the times and U.S. interests demanded.
IRELAND
Irish Times, Nov. 17: Margaret Hassan's brother and sisters yesterday summed up their anger and horror at the news that she has been murdered by those who captured her on Oct. 19.
She stood for solidarity and fraternity between peoples and religions and practiced her beliefs in the most extraordinary way, by bringing electricity and water supplies to hospitals until the moment of her kidnap. Her death symbolizes all the failures of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and how urgent it is to resolve the conflict there.
Heartbreaking
Her family's feelings will be shared all over the world, including this country, where the realization that she was a citizen of Ireland, as of Britain and Iraq, reinforced identification with the war's many victims. The fact that she worked on aid projects for 30 years in Iraq, helping an estimated 17 million of its people over that time, and vehemently opposed United Nations sanctions and the U.S.-led invasion last year, makes her death all the more heartbreaking.
Her kidnappers called for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq and women prisoners released there, in a clear attempt to affect public consciousness about the war there by raising demands that were impossible to meet. It is appalling that such a remarkably good woman should have become so involved and that her kidnappers should have so callously disregarded the moving appeals for her release by her husband, Mr. Tashen Ali Hassan. ...
One can only hope that such inhumanity will help turn Iraqis decisively against those responsible for kidnapping her in the name of a war between peoples and their religions.