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LONDON, England (AP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday that CIA director George Tenet had resigned for personal reasons, not because of intelligence failings linked to September 11, 2001, or the Iraq war. But not everyone in Europe agreed with that assessment.
In Germany, Tenet's resignation was seen as a move by U.S. President George W. Bush to boost his re-election campaign by dumping a top official associated with intelligence lapses.
"Tenet survived onslaughts until now," the Frankfurter Rundschau daily commented. "It's possible that now that Bush's star is sinking in the polls, he (Tenet) has become a burden for his boss."
In Spain, the El Mundo newspaper carried an editorial cartoon showing Bush arriving in Europe aboard Air Force One.
The door opens and down walks Bush, holding up a disembodied head with a tag saying "Tenet" hanging from it.
European leaders look up slightly bemused.
On Thursday, Tenet surprised many people in Washington by announcing his resignation in an emotional address to Central Intelligence Agency staff. Citing personal reasons, Tenet ended seven years as the CIA's director during two presidencies.
His decision came shortly before the expected release of several reports on intelligence failures by the CIA and other U.S. agencies regarding the September 11 attacks and erroneous prewar estimates about Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities in Iraq.
Blair, Bush's strongest ally during the Iraq war, said Friday, "I would just say that the head of the CIA left for personal reasons. He said that very, very clearly."
Speaking on British Broadcasting Corp. television, Blair said: "As far as I understand it, the decision of the CIA director has got absolutely nothing to do with Iraq, 9/11 or anything else."
The British prime minister has been criticized at home for justifying the Iraq war by saying that Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction posed a big threat. Coalition troops have failed to find such weapons in Iraq.
The Independent newspaper in London, which strongly opposed the war, described Tenet's departure as a "cheap sacrifice."
"His resignation lifts a weight of baggage from Mr. Bush," the paper wrote in an editorial. "The more flak Mr. Tenet takes, the less falls on anyone else."
But the foreign minister of Italy, another U.S. ally in the Iraq war, praised Tenet, who plans to step down in mid-July and be temporarily replaced by his deputy, John McLaughlin.
"Italy joins with the president of the United States George Bush in complimenting the CIA chief for his work carried out in these years," the ANSA news agency reported Franco Frattini as saying.
Others viewed the loss of Tenet as a setback for Bush.
"Five months before the presidential election, the resignation of a trusted aide of this caliber means a weakening for Bush," Germany's Handelsblatt economic daily said.
In France, terrorism consultant Alexis Debat said Tenet had a reputation as a yes-man for the president. "He said what Bush wanted to hear," Debat said in an interview. "The extent to which Tenet compromised his administration to retain the link with Bush is damning."
In London, The Times newspaper pointed out the stark contrast in fortunes of Tenet and John Scarlett, the author of a controversial, prewar British intelligence dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons that Blair had used to justify the conflict.
Scarlett was chosen Thursday to head Britain's foreign intelligence agency MI6. Although the claims in the September 2002 dossier are in dispute, a judge last year decided that the BBC had been wrong to report that officials had knowingly manipulated evidence.
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