Hype surrounding Clinton testimony dismays observers.

PARIS - The world's amazement at what is going on in Washington, the weeks of snickering and eye-rolling, now has turned to stunned revulsion, and genuine worry.

"It makes me want to throw up,"declaared German Chancellor Helmut Kohl over the weekend leading up to Monday's broadcast of President Clinton's Aug.17 grand juiry testimony.

To which columnist Pierre Georges, in yesterday's French daily Le Monde, added, "We're all German Chancellors now --- all of this is worthy of vomitting."

If in Washiangton the Monica Lewinsky scandal is about a beleaguered president and a zealous prosecutor, or about partisan wars between Democrats and Republicans, outside the United States it is about something overarching, about a menace to world leadership.

"Imagine someone in Afghanistan or Algeria or Kosovo seeing the president under these circumstances," declared an influential French government official. "The message they get is that the United States can be pushed around."

If Americans are so contemptuous of the authority of their president, this official said, if Americans so disrespect themselves as to take wild risks with sacred institutions, why should adversaries of the United States have any respect for the country either?

" Are you people nuts?" shouted a Paris taxi driver as he banged his steering wheel, "Why are you trying to weaken your country when the world needs it to be strong?"

In Cambodia, King Norodom Sihanouk dwelt on the Clinton scandal at length during lunch, said opposition leader Sam Rainsy. Sihanouk reportedly observed that "if a country was as tough with its leader as the States, then there would be no head of states in any country. Everybody laughed, of course," Rainsy said.

"More seriously," he said, "we think this will tarnish the reputation, the honor, not of any leader but of the whole country.

The four hours of videotaped testimony was broadcast on CNN's International channel and on national television in -Brtain, Argentina, Italy, Israel,Canada, Switzerland, Lebanon, and Greece, among other countries. France was one exception: We have no intention of wallowing in the pornographic character of this testimony," said one television news director.

The world's news media drew historical analogies to the scandal, almost always in DEFENSE of Clinton, often mentioning the Salem witch trials and the McCarthyism of the 1950's, but also reaching back to the Spanish Inquisition. THE DUTCH DAILY NRC HANDELSBLAD COMPARED INDEPENDENT COUNSEL KENNETH STARR'S METHODS OT THOSE OF THE STASI, THE FORMER EAST GERMANY'S RUTHLESS SECURITY FORCE. AND THE GERMAN DAILY BERLINER ZEITUNG HEADLINED ITS STORY: " STARR MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN STALIN." !!!!!!

Most British newscasters and commentators took the position that the GRAND JURY APPEARANCE WAS FAURTHER EVIDENCE THAT THE U.S. LEGAL SYSTEM HAS TAKEN A TURN FOR THE BIZARRE. "One of the key questions," said Gavin Escher, a BBC comentator, : is whether we are watching a legal proceeding or a spat of sexual McCarthyism."

---