'Yassin assassination buries ME peace'

A Palestinian hangs a giant poster of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as Palestinians are lining up to console the Hamas leadership during the second day of mourning of assassinated Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin at a stadium in Gaza City yesterday. Israel will continue its policy of "liquidating terrorists", Israeli Defence Minister Shaoul Mofaz was quoted as saying by Israeli army radio, one day after it killed the leader of the radical Islamist movement Hamas. PHOTO: AFP

"Iraq 2. The murder of Hamas's leader is going to make the situation in the Middle East unpredictable," wrote Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

"The only official peace plan for the region, the 'roadmap,' is today dead," Nezavisimaya said.

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"Israel has opened 'the gate to hell,'" wrote the Izvestia daily.

"The situation in Israel risks being transformed into a large-scale war that will inflame anti-West and anti-Israeli sentiment throughout the Arab world," Izvestia said.

"The European Union will likely have to rethink its conception of an 'enlarged Middle East', which envisages a strengthening of relations between Mediterranean countries, because of the radicalization of the Arab world," Izvestia said.

"The United States can no longer count on an easy success in its missionary plans to rebuild the Muslim world on a base of electoral democracy," Izvestia said.

Meanwhile, Saudi dailies were in no doubt yesterday that Israel had killed off the chances for peace by assassinating Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, but one newspaper thought Washington's plan for reform in the Middle East would suffer most of the collateral damage.

"(Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon's crime in Gaza yesterday dealt a body blow to the American plan," wrote Al-Medina in a front-page leader headlined "Greater Middle East Fire."

Washington's "Greater Middle East Initiative" ignored the Palestinian issue, suggesting its authors "can't see that regional peace and political reform are inseparable," it said.

Then came "the assassination of the crippled Yassin with US(-made) missiles fired from US(-made) helicopters" to "put American policy planners sitting in front of their computers at the Pentagon, State Department, White House and CIA in a fix," the paper wrote.

The assassination of the founder of Hamas will not help US President George W. Bush's efforts to fight terror, "because Bush's war on terror has to be comprehensive and not exclude any terrorist, including Sharon," and it will complicate Washington's task in Iraq and Afghanistan.