[originaltext] Washington (dpa) - The United States, never shy to lecture the

Washington (dpa) - The United States, never shy to lecture the rest of the world on the virtues of democracy, has become the target of ridicule from newspapers and hostile governments delighting at the Election 2000 paralysis.
   The Washington Times noted that "nations used to being targets of lectures for their own election irregularities were taking barely disguised glee in the drawn-out battle for the White House between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat A1 Gore.
   The leaders of the United States allies have politely held back with mockery, but not so their newspapers, or officials from countries that have less than cordial ties with Washington. A brief selection of the global ridicule:
   Rome’ s La Republica judged in a front-page headline that Tuesday was "A day worthy of a banana republic".
   "Washington, we have a problem," joked the French-language Swiss daily 24 Heures.
   A Russian daily quipped about the "Divided States of America".
   British tabloid the Daily Mirror ran the headline "Forrest Chumps" with the kicker "This election’ s like a box of chocolates you never know what you’ re going to get".
   Iran’s Khabar state broadcaster delighted in showing the 1996 Hollywood comedy "My Fellow Americans, about corruption in the White House, on election night".
   In Russia, the recipient of generous advice from Washington over the years, President Vladimir Putin offered to send election monitors to help with the vote count.
   His election commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov who was invited to the U.S. to observe the poll, rubbed salt into the wound by praising a system which "definitely enriches my understanding of how irregularities can occur".
   Officials in India, the world’ s largest democracy, also offered advice and offered to send help, as did Zimbabwe.
   There, the campaign chief of President Robert Mugabe, Jonathan Moyo, said: "Perhaps now we have reached a time when they can learn a lot from us. Maybe Africans and others should send observers to help Americans with their democracy.’
   Libya’ s U.N. envoy commented about the "Florida model: We can see from the elections that we are the true democracies and not this ridiculous American model."
   In a Washington press briefing, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was forced to tell journalists questioning him that the United States had not entertained a proposal to allow observers from the Organization of American States, a common practice in elections in many Latin American countries.
   Pushed by journalists, he added: "I think pretty much most of the world maybe most of the world outside this room understands that this is a regular, normal, legal, clear, transparent, open process for United States democracy."