While the 37th Congress is closer and closer, I like to enter this Conference in order to express a few words.

Radical Party has to continue managing those campaigns which were announced in the General Motion approved by the General Council held in Sofia in July 1993; paying attention to some corrections, both political and organizative.

At last, the issue of the affirmation of a transnational, international language has to became an issue debated in the frame of the Congress, with a political approach. Whe should stop chatting about an hipothetical right TO an international language, and we should start working to show the need for the Right OF the international language. I mean, the focus shouldn't be Esperanto as the language which should be studied in order to have more and more generations able to communicate to each other, but a sovranational juridical system giving and fixing rules about communications. Starting from existing international institutions.

The Issue is, in the frame of our political approach: at an international level rules about transports, trade, etc. exist, while do not exist any rule about linguistic communications; at least, they do not exist at the same level, or at the proper one. Starting from UE, rather than from UN (where working languages are already selected, among other reasons) we should open the issue of promoting a common working linguistic code - which one, it is a secondary issue.

Well, about international language these lines are quite obvious.

Such as it is obvious that legalization of drugs, Aids will be priorities of the political activity for the next months, given that tracks for our political action are already fixed.

Anyhow, i do believe that it is necessary to clarify one methodological priority, together with two campaigns which I think we have to open starting from the Congress or, better, just after RP will have opened a process of internal perestrojka - which does not mean glasnost.

There is no way, I think: either Radical Party is the entity which directly manages its campaigns, or it risks to forget what it is, it has been, has to be.

We have been looking at a strange phenomenon: campaigns created by RP itself have been changing into organizations. For instance, "Hands off Cain" started being the name of a RP's campaign, while now it is an organization, which cooperates with RP.

Wether the need for a specific organization, officially out of RP, existed or not, it cannot be answered, now; even if it is true that they have not brought any substantial advantage to the effectiveness of the campaigns themselves, at least so far.

Anyway, the issue, the question, is another one.

In a Gandhian, nonviolent viewpoint, political tools prefigurate goals. I do believe that our goal is not the abolition of death penalty by the year 2000, Our goal is rather the affirmation of the juridically regulated space in the frame of which there will be the chance either to mantain or to abolish the death penalty at an international, sovranational level.

The problem of nowadays is "simply" the lack of international law as ius cogens. Either we can fight for the abolition of the death penalty itself, or we can fight for creating a juridical system which can be called to decide about it. These two levels of action and of approach are not in contradiction, except for one thing: a political tool which is specifically organized to conquer the abolition of capital punishment does not prefigurate in itself the new order, the new juridical system. On the contrary, RP prefigurates the juridical, institutional space. Just in its being a political party, a political party, RP prefigurates in itself, in its own existence, the need for institutional spaces adequate to what RP is.

It is enough to give a look to what in Italy was the campaign for the right to divorce, to realize that it was not divorce in itself the goal of Pannella and friends, but democracy as a system, a way how unify people while dividing them on concrete decisions to be taken.

Either it will be RP itself the promoter of the worldwide abolition of death penalty, or it won't impose a re-definition of the role of UN and of international law. That's why I think we should correct our approach about death penalty, concentrating our efforts in specific geographic areas, emphazising the contradiction between democracy and death penalty, while continuing our efforts inside UN system /see below).

RP should have two priorities, for the next season. I do not mean two exclusive priorities. Only, I like to write here a few lines about two priorities:

1. THE ENLARGEMENT OF EU

2. DEATH PENALTY IN USA

1. It is just a fast enlargement of the EU that can help and support the transformation of EU into a tendencially federal entity.

We have to open a contradiction in Europe, which is the way how to enlarge EU.

I think to an appeal able to collect adhesions both in western and central-eastern Europe, an appeal for a federal Europe, and for the immediate enlargement of EU. Let's imagine how such an initiative can be effective in that part of Europe in which our presence has been reaching some quality; let's imagine which contradictions such an appeal can open in the richer part of Europe, which is afraid of hte poor new Europe, of it poornes, of migration from there.

Moments of contradictions: it's what we need, what we have to open.

True, it has to be studied from the technical viewpoint; but I do believe that RP could become the Danube, the bridge between the two Europe, proposing just a government of a process which will go on anyhow. But it depends on how.

The debate we have been having inside Conference Danube is quite useful, and I do not add anything here.

2. Death penalty is not compatible to a "traditionally" democratic country. We have to open such a campaign, in US.

A lot of us believe that death penalty issue can be the stronger one in order to try to establish an important political presence in USA. I do agree. But let me say, on hte basis of the Paula Cooper Campaign experience, that we have to slightly correct our current approach. I do not mean, now and here, the general campaign, and the campaign having UN system as its counterpart. I think that we can and should use death penalty issue as the bridge toward USA, while emphazizing the crucial contradiction between being USA a political democracy and its providing the capital punishment. That is the contradiction we should open in USA, a contradiction which used to be enough succesful in our American experiences in the very last years of 80s. There is no way to get the leadership of the enormous amount of organizations fighting in USA against death penalty, but moving the issue out of human rights environmemt. And even out of Governor Cuomo's approach - the one he has been undertaking during the last years.

We should not forget that the reason why capital punishment was suspended in USA on the basis of a Supreme Court decision, until 1976, was merely political. There is just a point of contradiction which can be opened in USA about death penalty, which is that capital punishment is out of a democratic juridical system, i.e. creates a deep contradiction between such a sanction and principles and values inspiring American juridical system.

Minoritarian position, of course. But a strong position, credible. One of the very first decisions taken by those parliaments elected in central-eastern Europe, just after the fall of the Berlin wall was the abolition of the death penalty.

I mean, it is not just a matter of human rights, in USA.

As it is evident I'm sayng that strictly in the viewpoint of the RP's action. I do believe that there is no way to open, to provocate a debate in the US society, but this one.

Well, my bad English imposes to me not to be enough clear, such as it imposes not to be as complex as I'd have liked to.

What is sure, anyhow, is that the need for debating, here, looking at the Congress, is unaboidable.

Paolo Pietrosanti

member of the Secretery

Radical Party