World Amused, Disgusted, Incredulous--Even Respectful

“Have you Americans gone crazy?” lawyer Philippe Jacquet asked over a morning mug of draft beer in a Paris bistro. “Already the jobs that people like us have are stressful. So when the president of the United States wants to have a little fun on the side, how can you be so uptight?”

From cafes in France to dinner tables in Beijing, from newsrooms in Brazil to the West Bank offices of the Palestinian Authority, the world is watching the drama unfolding in Washington concerning President Clinton’s alleged relationship with a 24-year-old former White House intern, Monica S. Lewinsky, and allegations he or close friend Vernon E. Jordan Jr. asked her to lie under oath about the relationship.

The reaction has been a mixture of amusement, disgust, incredulity and profound respect. “Only in America,” say foreign critics. “Only in America,” echo admirers.

“The failure of the president of the United States to escape the full force of the law, against his deepest wishes . . . sets an example to the rest of the world, to tyrannies and democracies alike,” wrote John Carlin, a correspondent for the Independent newspaper of London. “Once the laughter has subsided, we might all fruitfully pause in wonder for a moment of sober thought.”

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“It’s like attacking him for a credit card problem,” objected a Mexican senator, aghast that “the leader of the world” could be assailed for an alleged sexual dalliance. In Mexico, affairs with underlings are widely considered a perk of political power, and that is true in many other countries and cultures.

“If President [Boris N.] Yeltsin or Premier [Viktor S.] Chernomyrdin were exposed for having a love affair with a 20-year-old secretary, that would only boost their popularity,” Andrei V. Kortunov, president of the Russian Science Foundation, said in Moscow. In Africa, “power is recognized as the most effective aphrodisiac,” said Richard Cornwell of the Institute of Security Studies in Johannesburg, South Africa.

With the speed of light, information and opinions about the Washington controversy are flying around the world, over the airwaves and the Internet. In China, the Youth Daily newspaper has helpfully directed readers to a Web site where they can catch the latest developments.

Joon Ang Ilbo, one of South Korea’s leading daily newspapers, has run photos of “Clinton’s Women” and told readers of what it sees as the American chief executive’s “insatiable desire for flirting.”

In Britain, no stranger to sexual peccadilloes among its public figures, interest has been intense in the Clinton controversy, with the left-wing Guardian lamenting “that loose presidential zipper.”

The establishment Times of London has assessed the possible offenses committed by Clinton as perjury, solicitation of perjury and obstruction of justice, and said that “if true, they would warrant indictment, a trial and certain resignation.”

To some, all this ink and air time seems too much.

“With so many important matters going on, like the peace process in the Middle East or the Algerian civil war, it is hard to believe that everybody is worried about this trivial affair,” complained Carlos Miranda, 60, an Argentine newspaper vendor on Corrientes Boulevard, the Broadway of Buenos Aires.

A U.S. congressman said Cuban leader Fidel Castro is astounded by the controversy and the attendant media uproar.

Castro “sharply criticized the American news media for the way they treat American officials,” Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) told the Associated Press. “He was absolutely baffled by it.”

Castro dropped in on an official Cuban reception for four Massachusetts congressmen Friday night, one of the events that are part of Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to the Communist island.

Coming on the heels of Clinton’s deposition in the case involving Paula Corbin Jones, the former Arkansas state employee who accused Clinton of having sexually harassed her when he was governor, the Lewinsky matter may appear to many non-Americans as just the latest of Clinton’s alleged infidelities. But some commentators have been quick to point out the differences.

“The country [the United States] can live with sex affairs in the White House,” Tagesspiegel, a Berlin newspaper said. “But not with a president who urges subordinates to lie under oath.”

“This is a typical Clinton scandal,” Hiroshi Kume, host of Japan’s popular Friday evening television program “News Station,” told viewers. “But Americans hate lies more than anything.”

However, in Southeast Asia, the flap is generally seen as another example of the media’s needless probing into private lives and of a mysterious U.S. need to tarnish its leaders. “What’s the big deal?” one puzzled professor at Singapore University asked a visiting American reporter. “John Kennedy and his brother played musical chairs with their girlfriends. So why are the media taking off after Clinton?”

In France, what a major newspaper has dubbed “Sexgate in the White House” seems to many to be added proof of Americans’ puritanical squeamishness about sex and their inability to separate politicians’ private and public lives.

French attitudes differ so starkly that the late President Francois Mitterrand could keep his mistress and love child in state-owned housing and bring them on official trips at taxpayer expense--and count on the press keeping mum.

“Who really cares what Clinton does in his off hours?” asked Jacquet as other morning customers and the owner of the bistro in the posh 16th Arrondissement of Paris expressed agreement. “Does it make him a worse president if he is unfaithful to his wife?”

In the opinion of some overseas analysts, it may end up that it does. Friday, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave assurances that Clinton was “focused on what he has to do.” But four days after the turmoil erupted, some foreign observers have concluded that his hold on power may be fatally compromised, or that the White House will become so bogged down in defending Clinton against the accusations that it will be incapable of global leadership.

“This latest affair turns Clinton into a sitting duck about to fall over,” predicted Hemi Shalev, political commentator for the Israeli newspaper Maariv. “If there is something to the allegations, the U.S. administration will be crippled and the White House will enter a phase of instability reminiscent of [Richard M.] Nixon’s final days.”

The daily Berliner Zeitung agreed: “At the moment, the suspicions and assumptions imply only one result--Clinton will prematurely be declared a lame duck,” politically unable to act.

Hungry for more information about what is going on in Washington, a trio of senior Chinese Foreign Ministry officials in Beijing came to dinner Friday at an American correspondent’s home. The evening began with jokes about whether Clinton or Mao Tse-tung, who was said by his former doctor to have had dozens of young girlfriends with whom he cavorted in his personal pool and on giant beds, had more mistresses. But the Chinese soon showed that their main concern is that the controversy will alter Clinton’s plans to make a visit to China this year, and that they might soon have to deal with a whole new set of faces in Washington.

Before the evening was over, the officials were already looking forward to a new administration. “Do the Republicans have anyone worthwhile?” one asked.

The latest accusations against Clinton have made him the butt of global jokes, with Jay Leno’s new label for the president (“Unabanger”) being quickly picked up by some English-language media. But the predicament in which the president now finds himself carries significance in regions such as Latin America and the Arab world, where corruption and the impunity of the powerful are among the most pressing political issues.

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“I don’t see anything bad about the president himself having to account for his actions in the justice system like any other citizen,” said Beatriz Fernandez, 50, a Buenos Aires office worker. Clinton’s legal problems, said the Jornal do Brasil, a newspaper based in Rio de Janeiro, “are inconceivable anywhere except the United States.”

In Arab countries, some people have been enviously pointing to an aspect of the Lewinsky and Jones cases that Americans take for granted--the right of an ordinary person to challenge the president of the United States.

“Of course, these sorts of things happen all the time in the Arab world as well, but they are not reported by the media,” said Zakaria Abu Hiram, an Egyptian magazine editor. “I think what is good about all this is that in the U.S., if the president is shown to be lying, he can be deposed.

“In this part of the world, these things happen often, but can anyone make such accusations? No. No one meddles in it.”

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Times staff writers John Daniszewski in Cairo; Sonni Efron in Tokyo; Maggie Farley in Jakarta, Indonesia; Evelyn Iritani in Seoul; David Lamb in Singapore; William D. Montalbano in London; Marjorie Miller in Jerusalem; Dean E. Murphy in Johannesburg; Richard Paddock in Moscow; Sebastian Rotella in Buenos Aires; Mary Beth Sheridan in Mexico City; and Rone Tempest in Beijing, along with Petra Falkenburg and Christian Retzlaff of the Berlin Bureau and Sergei L. Loiko of the Moscow Bureau, contributed to this story.

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Global Reaction

Reaction on the Clinton allegations in selected papers around the world:

From cartoonist Dieter Zehentmayr in Berlin newspaper. Bubble reads: “I also had an affair with Bill Clinton.”

Above, German paper reads, “Sex, Lies and an Eavesdropping Attack.”

Left, Johannesburg paper.

Headline in Argentina, bottom, translates as “Romance Scandals Surround Bill Clinton.”

Source: Times foreign bureaus.