Updated 9/14/01 10:30 a.m. EDT

World Press Review: Opinion from English-language newspapers

The Times of India, addressing the economic impact of the attack, calls for a calm response:
"Tuesday's attacks have been compared with Pearl Harbor, but that 'day of infamy' stirred a sleeping giant to new heights. A calm, measured response by the Bush administration today would help revive public confidence and get America back to business.

"It would also preserve the health of the global financial system, which the terrorist strikes directly seek to undermine. And that would be a far better way of getting even than getting thoughtlessly mad."

In the Moscow Times, former Soviet foreign minister Boris Pankin advocates truce and dialogue:
"Terrorism does not emerge from nowhere and will not simply disappear into thin air. Hideous as its guise is, it reflects the pains and aspirations of the hundreds of millions of downtrodden and affronted on our planet ....

"It's one thing to seek out the guilty and quite another to take vengeance randomly. Leave the weak and intimidated to dole out threats and curses, to conduct mass surveillance and searches. And let the courageous and smart come to agreement among themselves and emerge ready to propose to the 'other side' to discuss honestly and without prejudice all that is bloody and painful in this world–like emissaries carrying the flag of truce into the political, ethnic, religious and social rooms of humanity's common home.

"Let's not miss this opportunity. It may be the last."

The Jerusalem Post says states that support terrorism must be held accountable:
"The enemy is not merely Osama bin Laden or whatever terrorist organization carried out the monstrous attack. The enemy is the states that sponsor terrorists and the ideology that animates them ....

"If the bin Ladens of the world are defined as the enemy, terrorism has won; if the governments that sponsor terrorism are the enemy, then terrorism can be defeated ....

"The free world must recognize that it is in a war of self-defense whose goal is victory. The concept of a war against terrorism is meaningless without the goal of removing terrorist regimes. The exact combination of diplomatic, economic, and military tools to be deployed toward this goal is a legitimate matter of debate. But a war against terrorism that avoids the issue of regime change in countries such as Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan cannot be won, because it has not even really been joined."

The Bangkok Post calls for countries to join together to fight terrorists and states that harbor them:
"It is high time that the global community joined together to exert whatever pressure it can against countries which harbour known terrorists. These countries must be made to realize that they run the risk of becoming international pariahs because of their role in providing safe havens for these murderers.

"We have a collective responsibility to undertake measures in our own backyards to help ensure that terrorists cannot operate be it tighter security procedures, stricter law enforcement, better intelligence gathering and sharing or diplomatic or economic pressure. Now is the time to say: No more. It is also high time to take collective global measures because we have a right not to be threatened by fear from terrorists and those who harbor them."

The South African Dispatch also advocates caution:
"Unanimous in its condemnation of the repulsive acts (which might have killed 10,000 mostly innocent people), the world was straining toward some consensus against terrorism. It risked being caught in the jet stream of an incensed America.

"Many old enemies expressed regret: Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq and Cuba, and even the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. Their sympathies were tempered with cautions about U.S. foreign policy–and, no doubt, the awareness of their own vulnerability ....

"The Americans, their government, their friends and even their enemies–who might yet pay dearly for these actions–need to look for as long as it takes to find the sane course away from this insanity."

The Irish Times urges caution and an examination of the cause of terrorism:
"The [Bush] administration is under growing popular pressure to take rapid action. But in deciding when and how to do so it must also remember not to let those who used terror against the world's greatest democracy to set an agenda that would weaken its structures of freedom and law. They would achieve that if the U.S. lashes out emotionally against an ill-defined foe rather than awaiting clear evidence and creating an international consensus for punitive action ....

"Any effective campaign against international terrorism will have to tackle its root causes as well as the transient and suicidal individuals who carry out such outrages."

The Toronto Globe and Mail advocates an international approach:
"This isn't a war fought simply with weapons. It is a fight against an unknown enemy that must be rooted out through painstaking investigation. The U.S. approach to seek international cooperation is the only way to combat terrorism on foreign soil. American officials should also expect foreign police or security forces to share the time-consuming burden of work required in such a massive investigation.

"Nations of the world are horrified by the television images of death and destruction in the United States, and want to do something to help. The reason is not only sympathy, but also fear that the same sort of terrorism will strike other nations' soil next if nothing is done to stop it."

The Independent (UK) says the United States should pursue justice and an understanding of why Middle Eastern Muslims hate the West:
"The preferable short-term response [to the attack], an attempt by a broad coalition of nations to bring provable criminals to justice, would do nothing to reduce the likelihood of future attacks. That requires an understanding of what it is that drives people to such a pitch of righteous anger that they believe killing thousands of civilians, and themselves, is a necessary and virtuous action.

"The pursuit of justice, therefore, is quite separate from the pursuit of policies aimed at shrinking the pool of potential martyrs from which the terrorists of the future will be drawn, which ought to be the real objective of any sensible long-term response to 11 September 2001

"Sir Michael Alexander, the former British ambassador to NATO, argues persuasively that the U.S. and its allies must tackle the underlying injustices that are seen by Muslim populations across the Middle East as reasons for hating the West. The central grievances animating terrorism in the name of Islam are the thousands of civilians allegedly killed by the U.S. or Israel in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq."

For more international reaction, see this list of media sites.