South African newspapers on Wednesday commemorated the attacks a year ago on the United States in front-page articles and comments by politicians, but criticised the United States for its stance since September 11, 2001.
”The World Remembers” said the banner front-page headline of the Johannesburg-based Star over a photograph of the site where the World Trade Center once stood.
Inside, the paper ran a four-page spread on the attacks.
”We see a silver lining of peace around the fearsome black clouds facing humankind,” President Thabo Mbeki wrote in an article in The Star, calling for ”intensifying efforts for peace in all regions of the globe and joining hands in the global campaign to eradicate poverty and inequality”.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang commented:
”I have been at many conferences and conventions where Americans were booed and humiliated by other nations. I think it is time America took notice of what other countries are thinking about.”
Business Day newspaper said: ”If anything, the 12 months since September 11 last year will go down as a year of wasted opportunity. Far from making the world safe from terror as he undertook, Bush’s conduct has brought the world to the brink of a new Gulf War.”
”9/11 – What’s waiting today?” the Afrikaans daily Beeld asked on its front page, saying unilateral action against Iraq by US President George Bush was not an answer.
”The message to Bush the past couple of days, even from his most committed allies, is that a world where one country owes itself the right to declare war on another under the so-called banner of the international community, is a dangerous world,” the paper said. – Sapa