The press today has been reviewed by Michał Kubicki.
The arrest of Radovan Karadzic - wanted for genocide and crimes during the Bosnian war – is the top story in all the papers. DZIENNIK has an interview with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, former Polish prime minister and UN envoy to Bosnia in the early 1990s. He resigned from the post after the Srebrenica massacre, for which Karadzic was responsible. ‘Justice has been done. But it’s a bitter feeling as it is a disgrace for the Serbian authorities and the international community to allow Karadzic and the other war criminal Radko Mladic, who’s still on the run, to go unpunished for such a long time, Mazowiecki told DZIENNIK.
RZECZPOSPOLITA writes in an editorial that the arrest of Karadzic who is wanted by the Hague Tribunal is a step in the good direction, bringing Serbia closer to Europe. It was a lack of cooperation with the Tribunal that was the main obstacle in normalizing Serbia’s relations with the West. One shouldn’t forget, however, RZECZPOSPOLITA concludes, that there is another, far more difficult problem to resolve: a future status of Kosovo.
THE headline in the tabloid FAKT is ‘Serbia closer to the European Union’.
On the domestic scene, DZIENNIK writes that Monday’s funeral of Bronislaw Geremek, former foreign minister and one of the founders of Poland’s democratic transformations, was, sadly enough, tainted with political references. The daily takes to task opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski for failing to attend the ceremony. It also very critical of Adam Michnik, the editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, whose eulogy included a political manifesto – against the vetting procedure and historians from the Institute of National Remembrance.
On the arts pages, GAZETA WYBORCZA looks ahead to the annual ‘Chopin and His Europe’ International Music Festival which opens in Warsaw on 15 August with a truly sensational event. This is how the daily’s music critic describes an appearance of Ivo Pogorelic, the great loser of the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1980. The jury decision to eliminate him from the finals led one of its members, the famous Martha Argerich, to leave Warsaw in protest. As an aftermath of the scandal, for 27 years Pogorelic declined invitations to perform in Poland. Last year, he came here for the first time. Next month – the world’s most eccentric pianist, as GAZETA WYBORCZA calls Pogorelic, he will perform in Warsaw again.
Two papers carry extensive interviews with the Poland national football team coach Leo Beenhakker. The headline in RZECZPOSPOLITA is ‘I’m ready for the next round’. The EURO was a disappointment. For some reason Poles score successes in single games but fail in tournaments. This is a psychological problem’, Beenhakker told the daily. And in an interview with DZIENNIK he made a firm commitment: ‘Poland will qualify to the 2010 World Cup, without any doubt’. Asked if he’s going to say goodbye to such players as Krzynówek and Zurawski who will be 34 at the time, Beenhakker said: ‘age is not important, if one plays well, he can be 32 or 22’. His final comment is: ‘I still hope Poland can be among the top eight European teams’.