Italy a Spat Between Friends

By Frederick Painton

Now you see it, now you don't. With the deft touch of political prestidigitators, Italian party leaders last week made a government crisis disappear as if it had never happened. Two weeks after Prime Minister Bettino Craxi had marched up Rome's Quirinal Hill to present his resignation to Italy's President Francesco Cossiga over his handling of the Achille Lauro hijacking, Craxi returned to reclaim his place as leader of his five-party ruling coalition. The President and the four other coalition partners decided to consider Craxi's resignation provisional, thereby allowing the same government with the same policies to continue. After an expected vote of confidence this week, the partnership that has been in office for the past two years and three months now appears certain to become the longest-lived government in postwar Italy.

Craxi survived because none of his rivals for power was ready for a test of strength in new elections, especially over foreign policy issues as delicate as Italy's relations with the Middle East and its traditional links to the U.S. The Prime Minister emerged, if anything, stronger from the ordeal. Looking tired after two weeks of nonstop finagling, Craxi could not hide a note of triumph over his renewed mandate. Said he: "I always believed that this crisis could be rapidly overcome, since I never believed that the reasons behind it were sufficient to cause a rupture in the collaboration of the governing parties."

Still, when Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini, 60, leader of the small but pivotal Republican Party, abruptly withdrew from the government with two other Republican ministers on Oct. 16, Craxi's government seemed doomed to collapse. Spadolini was angered by the Prime Minister's decision to release Mohammed Abul Abbas Zaidan, the Palestinian Liberation Front leader who Washington believes planned to use the Achille Lauro to launch an attack on Israel. Furious at having been excluded from any prior consultation in that decision, Spadolini was also protesting what he considered the pro-Arab tilt in Rome's Middle East policy. For the pro-U.S. Defense Minister, the stand was a matter of principle, but he lacked broad political support for his position. Craxi, however, evoked an echo of sympathy and even national pride among average Italians with his defense of his actions. Declared the Prime Minister in a speech delivered the day he resigned: "We acted according to our conscience, according to our political convictions, according to our laws."

Criticism from the U.S. and from Spadolini's Republicans came as a "bitter surprise" to Craxi, who sought to appear as a wounded but loyal ally standing up for his nation's independence. Italians responded positively to the Prime Minister's posture. Indeed, a poll in the newsweekly L'Espresso showed 61% approval for Craxi's show of independence from the U.S., while only 19% disapproved.

Ironically enough, Craxi's political resurrection can be traced to the warm and sympathetic letter sent by President Ronald Reagan to soothe ruffled Italian feelings over U.S. criticism after Abbas' release. A week later, at Reagan's invitation, Craxi joined the President in New York City for a 25- minute private talk. Said Reagan after the chat: "I'm sitting here with my very good friend." For Italians worried about the potential threat to Italo- American relations, it was a signal that Craxi had been given a tacit endorsement by the White House. Said one political observer: "The new Craxi government is a Reagan creation." Spadolini suddenly found himself isolated. The Defense Minister negotiated his price for remaining in the government: a foreign policy more closely aligned with NATO, a stronger antiterrorist stance and better coordination among the coalition partners.

While Italian political life returned to normal, the Achille Lauro embarked on a new cruise with 570 tourists on board. It was not all smooth sailing. A bomb scare was taken so seriously that a nervous crew dumped a cargo of slot machines into the sea rather than risk the chance of hidden explosives among the crates. The ship also left a wake of legal problems. Italy's Supreme Court settled a quarrel over whether Genoa or Syracuse would have the authority to / continue the investigation of the hijacking and bring the terrorists to trial. Genoa won on the ground that the ship had sailed from its port.

Syracuse, the Sicilian city that had claimed priority as the place where the four hijackers had re-entered Italy, was left with two legal cases. One was brought by Carlo Longo, an angry local newsman who lodged a formal charge of "piracy" against President Reagan for the way the U.S. tried to seize Abbas on Italian soil. Said Longo: "Maybe they won't arrest Reagan, but Sicily isn't just an American colony. It's a matter of principle."

The other was an investigation into the standoff between the U.S. and the Italian military at the Sigonella NATO base, where the EgyptAir Boeing first landed. Local police reported that tensions between the two allies turned ugly when the U.S. special Delta Force saw its prey being taken from it. Nevertheless, the clash never went beyond raised voices. Said Craxi Envoy Antonio Badini, who negotiated the surrender of the four terrorists to Italian authorities: "Abbas' role appeared to us of secondary significance." More important, he said, "was our respect for international law, our relations with Egypt."

To be sure, a ripple of anti-American feeling did surface in Italy, but it has remained limited to an attempt by some 200 protesters to organize an anti- U.S. demonstration at Sigonella. Italian officials dismiss such protests. Said one defense official: "It's like a quarrel between husband and wife. Our ties are too deep, too historic to have been damaged by one incident." For all the appearance of Italian instability, some things never change. As the governing crisis proved once more, no postwar Italian government has ever fallen because of differences over foreign policy.

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof and Judith Harris/Rome