PARIS, Jan 21 (AFP) - European newspapers adopted a sarcastic and fatalistic tone in reacting Friday to US President George W. Bush's inaugural speech with some describing the event as his "coronation" and one daily offering him a pretzel in a tongue-in-cheek gesture.
The left of centre British daily The Guardian summed up concern in a commentary under the headline "Fireworks in Washington, despair around the world."
It compared the massive fireworks display used in the inauguration celebration Thursday to the ordnance US "occupation forces" would expend in Iraq in 24 hours.
"The contrasts between this uninhibited triumphalism and the real world are as wide as the American continent," it said.
In its lead editorial, Britain's conservative Daily Telegraph also wondered whether Bush's brave words could survive the test of reality.
Bush's "ringing encomium of freedom in his inaugural address yesterday faces a cruel and immediate test in Iraq," it said.
In Germany, the left-wing Die Tageszeitung greeted Bush's inauguration with a front-page reminder of an experience he would rather forget.
"Everybody gets a second chance, Mister President," the paper said in English, above a photograph of a pretzel, recalling the incident three years ago when he fainted after choking on one of the snacks.
"The message from this coronation is clear: in line with its first mandate and armed with even more self-confidence, this administration will do what it deems to be right without being deflected by anyone else," the paper said.
The conservative Die Welt gave Bush a warmer welcome back, but noted: "There has never been so much triumphalism at a US presidential inauguration, but neither has there ever been so much need for security ... which shows that the invisible war against terrorism is still far from won."
In France, where 71 percent of people said they would vote for Democratic challenger John Kerry before the November 2 election, Bush's inauguration received muted coverage.
Both the conservative newspaper Le Figaro and the popular daily Le Parisien described Bush's address as having "messianic" overtones, particularly on bringing freedom to nations around the world.
"Bush has organized his second term along messianic lines that make him happier than the day-to-day management of the details of his presidency," Le Parisien wrote.
The left-leaning Liberation poked fun at Bush's statement that the United States had lit "a fire in the minds of men", leading its article with the tongue-in-cheek question: "A pyromaniac president?"
In Austria, the daily Kurier noted that Bush had set out to turn his second term in office into an "epic" adventure.
"George W. Bush has not changed his objectives, only his tactic," the paper said. "A radical reformist, Bush has set out to turn his second mandate into an epic adventure and toward that end has invested the United States with a messianic role to fight tyranny."
In Italy, the left-leaning La Repubblica said Bush's inauguration was "the climax for a quiet man, sitting on a throne and watching a world that looks back at him with concern."
Corriere della Sera, Italy's biggest circulation daily, said that while Bush savors his second term as president, "a good part of American society believes the administration has no clue as to how to get out of the Iraqi imbroglio."
The press in Turkey, a NATO ally of Washington, reacted sceptically to Bush's wish to end tyranny in the world, reflecting particularly on the US presence in Turkey's next-door neighbour Iraq.
"This is how Bush sees freedom," said the liberal newspaper Vatan, showing pictures of an Iraqi couple killed three days earlier by an American patrol in Tel Afer, with their children in tears and covered in blood.
"Apart from Iraq itself, it's us that this war has affected most," wrote commentator Mumtaz Soysal in the newspaper Cumhuriyet:
"The number of our drivers who have been killed, their throats cut like sheep, has overtaken even the registered losses of countries with military personnel there, with the exception of the US and Britain."
"I'm afraid that even if Bush started reading the Koran in Arabic, he would never succeed in winning the hearts of anyone in the Muslim world," wrote Murat Yetkin in the newspaper Radikal, summing up widespread scepticism in Turkey, a Muslim society, at Bush's efforts to make over his international image.
01/21/2005 17:02 GMT - AFP