Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers around the world:

Daily Telegraph, London, on the uprising in Kyrgyzstan:

The ousting of Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan is not as clean-cut as many in the West might wish. The uprising against him was accompanied by arson and looting, some of it aimed at businesses owned by Chinese, Uighurs and Turks.

The looting has stopped. The country no longer has two legislatures, the one defying the other, and the main rivals for power, Kurmanbek Bakiev and Felix Kulov, the acting security chief, have temporarily buried their differences. Although the situation is calmer than it was, the transition is proving messy.

And yet little Kyrgyzstan could still be the yeast in the despotic dough of Central Asia. That will require a clean presidential election on June 26, and thereafter a more even distribution of power between the winner and the prime minister than under Akayev.

Regime change in Bishkek apparently presents the West with a classic choice between acquiescence in despotism for the sake of stability and support for political liberalisation whose outcome is uncertain. Yet, to take Uzbekistan as an example, is the authoritarian rule of Islam Karimov inherently stable? Does his disastrous human rights record not push opponents towards radical organisations such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, designated as a terrorist movement by America in 2001, and Hizb-ut-Tahrir?

Washington has bases in both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It naturally wants to retain both as instruments against global terrorism. But it should not sacrifice its concomitant commitment to democracy to the likes of Karimov. In Central Asia, however hesitatingly, Kyrgyzstan is showing the way forward.

La Repubblica, Rome, on the latest Asian quake:

Three months after the December 26 tsunami, the devastated regions and the entire world experienced the nightmare that everything was starting again.

The alarm shows once again the weakness of southern Asia, while the world already forgot the December 26 lesson that seemed so unforgettably engraved in our memory.

The pain and the emotion had united the world in a sincere embrace, private solidarity exploded at levels that were never seen before.

And yet at the beginning of January a more cynical and familiar game started, with the parade of world leaders at the Jakarta summit, using governmental aid as an instrument of geopolitical influence in the area.

Then the destiny of the evacuees of Banda Aceh was disconnected from ours, it went back in the shade of Third World catastrophes, along with Darfur and AIDS in Africa.

This recent alarm was the last hope to reactivate interests and vigilance of the forgotten drama in that part of the world.

Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, on Pope John Paul II:

Not in a very long time has a Pope been so outwardly oriented and made such use of his position as a church political leader as John Paul II. His time as pope stands out as a radical break from the earlier trend of popes, like other religious leaders, dedicating their power to issues of faith and moral decisions.

It is also remarkable how the Pope has broken new ground for contacts with other religious communities, of both Christian and other faiths. Gone is the Catholic Church's claim to be the One, outside which there was no salvation.

(But) the Catholic Church has lost ground in its old core area, Europe. Just like in the Protestant countries, people are turning away from the church and living by their own moral values, not the church's. Here, Pope John Paul II has strayed farther and farther from his church members.

In his opposition to contraceptives and his detached attitude to people's sex lives, the Pope has, however, found political support among Muslim rulers with the same claim of preserving a "pure faith." And since 2001, the White House has been on the same side.