Middle East analyst dies

Peter Scholl-Latour, one of Germany's longest-serving journalists, died near Bonn on Saturday, aged 90. In recent interviews he described the Israel-Palestinian conflict as "hopeless" and warned Germany to avoid military interventions in world affairs.

In the wake of the 2001 attacks by al Qaeda hijackers on New York, Scholl-Latour predicted long-term failure of the US- and British-advocated invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq, citing the previous Soviet failure to prop up a communist Afghan regime during the Cold War.

His subsequent book, published in German in 2004, was titled "World Power in Quicksand: Bush against the Ayatollahs."

From 1988 - at the end a career with the German public broadcasting channels ARD and ZDF that included numerous television documentaries - Scholl-Latour was often invited to give his assessments during televised roundtable discussions on the Middle East and Islam.

Some analysts criticized Scholl-Latour for putting too much emphasis on religious connotations and oversimplifying complex situations.

Vietnam War reportage

An earlier book, "Death in the Rice Fields," sold 1.3 million copies and was based on 30 years of experience in Indo-China.

He started as a French paratrooper and later, in 1973, he and his German camera team was held for a week by the Viet Cong. They emerged with spectacular footage and Scholl-Latour reported on German television that the then-enemy had exposed "to some extent the impotence of America."

Age of 'imbalance'

His 1961 work "Matata in Congo" analyzed the rise and murder of the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba, shortly after Belgium gave up eight decades of colonial exploitation.

In the latest of his 30 books, published early this year, "The World off the Rails," Scholl-Latour again turned to developments in the Middle East.

In an interview with the German Catholic news agency, KNA in February, he said: "We live in a period of total imbalance."

"The Christian Occident has distanced itself largely from its religion while Islam in one go has acquired an enormous dynamism, " Scholl-Latour said.

He added that Pope Francis should seek "self-assured dialogue" with Islam.

Gaza situation 'hopeless'

Still giving interviews in late July, he told Germany's tabloid-style broadsheet Bild that the situation in Gaza in the conflict between Hamas and Israel was "hopeless."

"It is an absolute test of power. No one wants to lose face," he said, adding that neither side would change its view.

"Hamas is not an army. We don't know at all how the armed group coordinates its political leadership," he added.

French-German parents

Scholl-Latour was born in 1924 in the western German Ruhr District city of Bochum to French-German parents. His mother came from Alsace and his father, a doctor, from Saarland, where French-German contacts were common. He was educated in Switzerland at a Jesuit Catholic college.

In 1945, near the close of World War II, the young Scholl-Latour was detained briefly by the Hitler's Gestapo as he tried to join Tito's partisan army in Yugoslavia.

From 1948, Scholl-Latour studied in the Rhine river city of Mainz and then the Sorbonne in Paris where he earned a degree in political science. He was to return to Paris in 1971 as chief correspondent for Germany's then-new federal television channel ZDF, before reporting from Vietnam.

Scholl-Latour's death was announced on Saturday by the Berlin-based publishing house Propyläen.

Tributes

Germany's minister for culture and media, Monika Grütters, described Scholl-Latour as "one of the last great journalists who sought to explain the world."

His television reports had enabled a "whole generation to see the world through through his eyes," Grütters said.

Leading opposition Left party parliamentarian Gregor Gysi said Scholl-Latour was a "very independent, very headstrong and prominent personality."

Propyläen said Scholl-Latour's final book, about the Middle East and Ukraine, would be published in September. Its German title translates as "The Curse of the Evil Deed."

ipj/mkg (KNA, dpa, AFP)