Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel welcomes the Radicals

by Paolo Pietrosanti

The Radicals in the Castle! Thursday 24 May. 2 p.m. It is with a "welcome back" that Czechoslovakian President Havel welcomed the delegation of the Radical Party, mainly Radicals who had been dissidents in the Ancien Régime, that is, those activists who were expelled in the course of these last ten years for their non-violent actions in Czechoslovakia.

The meeting, which lasted about 40 minutes, started with a brief ceremony in which gifts were exchanged. A bunch of flowers with cigarettes coming out of it, to underline the peculiar "passion" of the President, a videocassette on the history of the party and one containing the film of the demonstration of 18 August 1989, the remainders of the television camera used by journalist Carlo Romeo, destroyed by the police in August 1989.

After having thanked the Radicals for their gifts and expressed

his appreciation for their activity in favour of democracy in the countries of "real socialism", President Havel exchanged opinions with the Radicals on several important issues.

First of all the question of Tibet, the conditions of the tormented "roof of the world". Havel recalled his commitment, absolutely identical to the Radicals' one, as the presence of Giovanni Negri, President of the Italian Parliament's intergroup for Tibet, witnessed.

Havel also invited the Radicals to engage in favour of Kurdistan. He then lingered on the questions of the rights for homosexuals and on his direct engagement in the solution of that problem in Czechoslovakia.

During the meeting, special attention was devoted to the question of Europe and the European Union. In spite of the fact that they had different starting points, President Havel advocating a federal kind of integration, the Radicals suggesting the constitution of a federal entity, in other words the United States of Europe, there still was a common commitment, a common political engagement aimed at the construction of a new Europe, to be finally united in the name of the values of democracy, tolerance and civil rights.

From the core of the European issue, the Radicals formulated a suggestion and a request to President Havel: that of accepting the challenge of resuming the battle in Europe against starvation in the Third World. On behalf of the Radicals, Giovanni Negri stressed the enormous value that the commitment of one of the highest symbols and protagonists of the return to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in favour of the achievement, in the countries of the Third World, of the first and fundamental right, the right to live, would have on the world scene..