I don't even want to try undermining Aligi Taschera's solid beliefs; all that matters to me is to expound a statement which, being contained in an impromptu, minute-long statement of vote, was necessarily concise and doctrinal.

On that occasion I said, and I repeat it here, that to advocate the use of the weapons of non-violence on the part of a leading class and a State whose political culture has no whatsoever familiarity with such weapons, which are thus unfeasible even in theory, is the expression of a distressful political arrogance (as well as of a sterile mental exercise).

Everyone knew and knows now, that the United Nation's decisions on the embargo in the first place, and on the use of "all means" to drive Iraq out of Kuwait in the second place, might have involved the use of military force, unless Iraq changed its attitude. Thus, to side with the U.N.'s resolutions "here and now" means accepting the risk of the use of military force. Unfortunately, "here and now", the only alternatives to backing the military action authorized by the U.N. are the positions of neutrality or of mere testimony, which are nevertheless legitimate. Clearly, I am not even taking attitudes of objective albeit unconfessed support to Saddam Hussein into account.

Today I have chosen to back that small, probably contradictory and dramatic step, toward the assertion of a new international law, a step which has been taken with the approval and the full implementation of 12 U.N. resolutions for the first time in post-war history, because only through an enhancement and a legitimation of that institution will it be possible for the force of political non-violence to represent, in the future, a feasible alternative to the force of weapons.

But above all, I have chosen to militate in a party which has decided to refound itself as a transnational subject, precisely in order to assert the greater force and efficiency of political non-violence in the political culture of the States and of the international leading classes.

To claim that "non-violent solutions" are feasible and can be tried by simply enouncing them or proclaiming them without having succeeded, as yet, in asserting the party of non-violence through non-violence in most countries, strikes me as being the expression of a deep but hopefully not irreversible "intellectual blindness".

In the parliamentary documents presented and in the decisions of vote taken (in favour or against the use of force), we have had the humbleness to point out a possible itinerary and scenario for non-violent politics, which depends entirely on our commitment, and not on the claim that it is Bush's exclusive task.

I said it depends entirely on our commitment, because apart from continuing to discuss whether there was more non-violence in some negative votes or in some positive votes, the main problem we are faced with here is WHAT TO DO to advance in the direction of political non-violence; a problem which in my opinion is or should be common to many people who voted NO and many who voted YES.