World View Shifts From Mild Disapproval to Anger, Disbelief

As once seemingly empty threats to impeach President Clinton moved within a few days of becoming reality this weekend, the view from abroad switched from one of amused disapproval of American puritanism to speechless anger at a politically driven quest to hobble the leader of the free world.

Until the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee approved four articles of impeachment to be brought before the full House, opinion makers and media around the world seemed reluctant to take too seriously the consequences of Clinton’s affair with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

But as Clinton confronts a likely impeachment vote this week and later trial by the U.S. Senate, foreign friends and foes alike seem dumbstruck by the possibility that the U.S. presidency could be discredited, global markets sent into another tailspin and relations with vital international partners undermined.

“You’re absolutely mad! You’re raving mad!” conservative French lawmaker Pierre Lellouche told the American people in an interview with The Times. “How do you want this man to be president when he spends all his time with his lawyers? It impacts on everything he does, because whatever he does or does not do, everyone will put it on the account of his legal problems. . . . This guy has been destroyed.”

In the Arab world, where fears that the Middle East peace process could unravel have escalated with recent outbreaks of violence, analysts see the fate of regional security tied to that of the beleaguered president.

If Clinton is impeached, there will be “a vacuum of leadership which could be harmful for global security,” said Nabil Abdil Fattah, foreign policy expert at Cairo’s Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Germany’s new culture minister, Michael Naumann, warned that the public excoriation of Clinton is fomenting anti-American sentiment in Europe because the scandal is distracting attention from the more serious issues confronting the continent.

In the foreign academic sphere, scholars have dispensed with droll pontifications about what they see as hysterical overreaction to a sexual peccadillo to warn of dire implications for Americans’ ability to respond to global issues that are far more important.

“How can a democracy work without information on the rest of the world?” demanded Ruediger Steinmetz, a professor of media studies at Germany’s University of Leipzig. “All the public in America knows about is what happened between Monica and Bill. The media are full of these titillating details to the exclusion of all else.”

European Union leaders spent the past few days in Vienna working out the final details of the common currency they will introduce the first day of next year, thus sparing Clinton’s discomfited allies any public pressure to comment on the congressional moves toward impeachment. But the continent’s politicians in general have been reticent while the man they see as having the most clout on the planet is brought closer to facing charges of high crimes and misdemeanors.

“There is an element of disbelief” about the impeachment proceedings, said Tana de Zulueta, a member of the Italian Senate’s foreign policy committee. “Most people in Italy were still under the illusion that this matter had been settled.”

Senior statesmen from around the world who have met with Clinton at the White House against the backdrop of the sex scandal and subsequent crisis have privately conceded dismay at the distorted focus of their visits. Their joint White House news conferences with Clinton have dealt almost exclusively with questions about the president’s relationship with Lewinsky and his battles with Republicans in Congress, instead of with such pressing issues as the troubled Middle East peace process and roiling Asian financial markets.

The official line in most countries is that Clinton’s personal woes pose little direct threat to bilateral relations. In China, for example, Foreign Ministry spokesman Tang Guoqiang echoed the global view that the impeachment process is an internal U.S. affair. But Chinese officials, like those elsewhere, quietly disclose concern that the damage being done to Clinton’s authority could jeopardize a new spirit in Sino-U.S. relations achieved by President Jiang Zemin through personal interaction with Clinton.

Polish citizens are uneasy about the impeachment process because Clinton has been their steadiest advocate in their efforts to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and ease their insecurity about being caught in a no man’s land between the Western alliance and an unstable Russia.

“Clinton is known. Clinton was visiting Poland a few years ago and confirmed American concern about our membership,” explained Andrzej Krzysztof Wroblewski, a commentator for the weekly magazine Polityka, one of Poland’s most prestigious publications. “Therefore, the reaction of most Poles would be conservative: ‘Leave our Clinton in peace!’ ”

The instability Poles fear in Russia--where the currency has lost two-thirds of its value this fall and no democratic candidate is given a chance of succeeding ailing President Boris N. Yeltsin--has in turn distracted Russians from Monicagate. But the United States and its erstwhile adversary are nonetheless at risk of security setbacks if Clinton is driven out of the Oval Office.

“If Clinton has to go now, [Vice President Al] Gore would hardly be in a position to pay enough attention to the problems of Russia until the end of the term,” said Sergei K. Oznobishchev, director of Moscow’s Institute of Strategic Assessment. “This would further change the political balance in Russia in favor of the left-wing opposition that controls parliament and will have a decisive word in the matter of START II’s long-awaited ratification.”

While the impeachment proceedings have dominated U.S. newspapers and television, most foreign media have scaled back their coverage, either out of a feeling of saturation with the subject or because of disgust at what they see as attempts by the Republican-dominated House to score points at the expense of global economic and political stability.

Not one editorial on the impeachment process appeared in any of the main British broadsheets Sunday. Neither did Sunday’s Der Spiegel, Germany’s most influential newsmagazine, or the leading ARD television newscasts devote a single word to the Judiciary Committee actions, although both offered thorough coverage of Clinton’s trip to Israel and his mission to shore up the Wye Plantation peace accord.

Likewise in Asia, media have been paying little heed to the proceedings that seem destined to make Clinton only the second president in U.S. history to be impeached by the House and tried in the Senate. Approval of the impeachment articles failed to make the front page of any newspaper in either Tokyo or Hong Kong. That lack of attention may have been partly due to the widely held expectation that even if the House votes to impeach Clinton, the Senate is highly unlikely to convict him and expel him from office.

“We cannot deny the possibility that the House of Representatives will approve the impeachment resolution beginning on the 17th, but still, the possibility of removing him is small,” Japan’s daily Yomiuri noted reassuringly Sunday.

In the streets of Tokyo, however, people expressed concern about the diminishing authority of U.S. leadership that is an unavoidable consequence of the impeachment effort.

“The scandal hurt Clinton’s image, but not that of the U.S.,” said Naoko Nagasaki, a 40-year-old social worker. But if Congress goes so far as to impeach the president, “my image of the U.S. itself would be hurt.”

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Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Rome, John Daniszewski in Cairo, David Holley in Warsaw, Marjorie Miller in London, Richard C. Paddock in Moscow, Valerie Reitman in Tokyo and Rone Tempest in Hong Kong, along with Anthony Kuhn of the Beijing Bureau, Sergei L. Loiko of the Moscow Bureau and Christine Winner of the Paris Bureau.