NORWAY

NORWAY
Aftenposten, Oslo, May 28: Even nature is unfair. At least, it must feel that way in Indonesia.
The country's authorities asked for international help after ... the earthquake on Java.
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told Indonesia's president that Norway wants to help. Many other countries have promised aid.
That is encouraging, although the amounts are not always as impressive, since the aid that reaches disaster areas is always less than promised.
Speed is important. To reach tens, perhaps hundred, of thousand injured is decisive.
Brunt of losses
Indonesia bore the brunt of losses when the tsunami crashed over the many Asian countries during Christmas 2004. Some 130,000 died in the Aceh province of Sumatra, compared, for example, to 8,000 dead or missing in Thailand.
Indonesia, unlike among others Norway, is one of the countries where fear of earthquakes is almost constant.
The problem is that poverty, including poorly made buildings, can amplify the consequences. It can barely get worse than a big earthquake hitting a poor, densely populated area, as in this case.
When nature's blind rage is linked with unfairness created by humanity, the earthquake victims don't just deserve sympathy and compassion, but generous help.
EGYPT
The Egyptian Gazette, Cairo, May 30: Next week's meeting between President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheik rekindles hopes that a long impasse in the regional peacekeeping will be broken.
The talks, the first between Mubarak and Olmert since the latter assumed Israel's premiership, come less than two weeks after the Israeli Premier had visited Washington. In the United States, Olmert looked at pains to tout and gain blessing for his plan to unilaterally set Israel's borders with the Palestinians. The blueprint won cautious support from the Bush administration, whose image has been in tatters in the Middle East, partly due to its perceived bias toward Israel. Olmert has threatened to go ahead with his plan with or without negotiations with the Palestinians. Omert's so-called "realignment" plan envisages removing isolated settlements in the West Bank, bolster major enclaves and set permanent borders by 2009 if peacemaking with the Palestinians remained blocked.
Vehement opposition
The blueprint has drawn vehement opposition from the Palestinians, who understandably view it as a fresh attempt to gobble up more Palestinian lands and foist an Israeli agenda on them.
Egypt, which was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel in the late 1970s, firmly believes that for peace to prevail in this long-trouble part of the world, it should be fair and the result of negotiations.
BRITAIN
Financial Times, London, May 30: It is hard not to feel sympathy for John Snow, whose departure from the Bush administration has been common knowledge in Washington for months. A competent and respected Treasury secretary, Mr. Snow has been undermined by the culture of leaks that often accompanies high office. And now, unsurprisingly, it is proving hard to find a replacement.
When George W. Bush came to office in January 2001, it became clear the role of Treasury secretary would be sharply downgraded from the prominence it enjoyed under Bill Clinton. In contrast to finance ministers in parliamentary democracies, U.S. Treasury secretaries already have to share their fiscal and policymaking duties with other officials - particularly the head of the office of management and budget.
Since 2001, however, even these have been whittled away by a White House that has repeatedly treated economic policymaking -- as opposed to politically-driven economics -- as a low priority. Paul O'Neill, Mr. Bush's first Treasury secretary, left office under a cloud in 2002 having tried and failed to integrate the president's tax-cutting agenda into a responsible fiscal plan. Mr. Bush presided over one of the most rapid shifts from budgetary surplus to deficit in modern American history.
Spilled ink
Some of this was necessitated by the security and military costs of the global war on terror and the more questionable and increasingly expensive war in Iraq. Much red ink was spilled last year when Congress passed the badly drafted $600 billion Medicare prescription bill for seniors, the largest single spending increase since Lyndon B. Johnson launched the Great Society in the 1960s. Most of the remaining fiscal deterioration derived from the series of tax cuts that Mr. Bush pushed through Congress in 2001 and 2002.
Given the scant regard Mr. Bush has paid to his Treasury secretaries and the fiscally conservative elements of his Republican base, it is no surprise that the hunt for Mr. Snow's successor has been so drawn out. Bob Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state, is reportedly leaving the administration because he has not been seriously considered for the job. An experienced public official, Mr. Zoellick lacks the qualities of salesmanship that are apparently desired in the new secretary. Given such priorities, a number of Wall Street luminaries have understandably rejected the White House's overtures.