ABSTRACT: In his report to the PR's Federal Council held in Brussels (February 12 - 14, 1988), the First Secretary of the Radical Party a project for the implementation of the motion approved by the PR Bologna congress of January 1988: creation of the trans-national party, actions towards a United States of Europe, for the defence of civil rights in totalitarian countries, the fight against extermination by hunger and against the prohibition of drugs.

(Notizie Radicali, No. 5 of March 11, 1988)

I am, we are already within a trans-national reality.

Dear comrades, very dear friends, first of all a greeting and a welcome!

The party's first secretary - whose task it is to convene the first meeting of the Federal Council - can today, legitimately, as a guest here in Brussels, welcome all of you - I an Italian can welcome you, even the non-Italian comrades - just as I could legitimately have done so, with full rights, in Rome or in any other city or country of the world.

The approval of the motion, even if it did not gain a three fourths majority of the votes, has already produced a deep change in me, more meaningful than I could have imagined when at the Congress I took the floor to accept the nomination. It is something instinctive as the first secretary of this party to feel myself part of a trans-national reality, to feel as if I were in Italy, in Rome or Bolgona even here among you who were born and grew up, more than half of you, in other countries than my own.

I hope that this will be of help to me, to us, in overcoming the difficulties that will be encountered in pursuing the objectives established by the motion. create and give substance and credibility to a party which is the first to decide to be trans-national.

It is one thing to be aware of the scale on which we feel we must act, and something else to manage to achieve with deeds, day after day, this new and different reality and succeed as well in knowing, interpreting and governing it.

The Choice Is Definitive With No Return

The choice we made at the congress is in my opinion definitive. There is no going back on it. It has been a difficult choice which, even while being based on analyses and evaluations made by the party - and they were long ones - nevertheless has perhaps not been entirely felt and understood in its full importance as yet.

I understand the perplexity and hesitation of those comrades who for years have been struggling in Italy, often with great commitment, dedication and incredibly positive results. To them the entrusting of the party's existence to a trans-national level appears like putting the future of the party and its members in the hands of "others", almost as if the trans-nationality were to block them in the continuation of their struggle and political engagement. I am honestly and sincerely convinced that this is not the case. The trans-national choice, the trans-national dimension is a necessity for the party and precisely for those members within the party who are the closest, the most "tied" to our history and our values. It is the only road that can ensure the "continuity", the possibility of proceeding in Italy too with the political battle without being upset or annulled by the conditions, the limitations, the chains that are put upon us by the party-power system, by a regime that finds in the Radical Par

ty the only obstacle with a fighting capacity and independent initiative and which therefore, for that very reason, must be eliminated, must have its connotations disfigured, must have its identity distorted.

The Challenge to the Others

Another conviction is growing in me. The situation in my country is not the result of specific and isolated conditions but it - in turn - is also the product of factors and elements that today, in our time, are the basis for the impossibility of resolving essential problems within "national boundaries".

But I must immediately add that in this fundamental conviction of a general order, we - and here allow me to say in quotation marks "Italians" - have once again launched a challenge whose outcome, once again, is being put in the hands of "others" as when we made an absolute condition of winning 10,000 members for continuing our party activities, entrusted in great part to "others". In fact, we cannot miss having it always present in our minds that the motion sanctions as essential for the existence of the party the membership of at least 3,000 non-Italian members by 1988. Therefore dear French, Belgian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Yugoslavian, Turkish and Israeli comrades who today are part - and the majority part - of this Federal Council, you cannot in turn fail to feel the great responsibility that all of this entails and which cannot avoid your direct involvement.

The difficulties are enormous, we know. But we have all accepted the task, launched the challenge. We must not and cannot do otherwise but face it with conviction and determination and the reasonable hope of being in the end victorious again.

I believe that the majority of us are aware that the trans-national choice is a final choice from which there is no retreat.

The Project and the Programme

To those - and they are many - who ask me about the party's project, I answer repeating with convinced stubbornness: "The Trans-national party"; to ensure, above all in Europe, a party that intends to operate with the same symbol, the same values, with mutual objectives, with harmonising interests, in various countries. One might object that this is Utopian, hardly probable to be realised, but I do not think there is anyone who would feel like saying it is not a "project", that it is, in other words, impossible. I maintain, on the contrary, that we have the project but that we must develop the programme to realise it. We must in this Federal Council dedicate ourselves to the hardest part, the what to do part. We also have the motion. It is a motion that has been called, by a certainly very authoritative voice, "only a declaration of intent". During the congress I was not of this opinion, and I certainly am not today either.

The Financial Objective

Four billion [lire] of self-financing and at least 3,000 members outside Italy as well as the creation of the first, significant associated nucleuses in at least a few European countries are extremely precise indications. I think it must be evident to all that we can never gather four billion lire of self-financing if we do not manage to get many thousands of Italians above all to enrol in the party. If we wanted we could easily translate the financial objective set by the motion into numbers of members to reach the conclusion that if by the next congress we do not manage to have 15,000 members we will certainly have sanctioned our failure. In Italy 12,000 members means less than two billion. Adding to this figure what we can get for the party with 3,000 non-Italian members and with contributions from Italian and European parliamentary groups, we can count on another 700 million. From this quick and simple calculation there results another 1,500 million to be acquired in order to reach our objective. We

can get them by increasing membership or by other means.

What other means? I think that with regard to the possibilities of obtaining the necessary money for the pursuit of our activities we must immediately make one problem clear: the receiving of money from others who are not members.

I believe that the project for the first international party can interest economic and financial circles. This is a delicate subject, but one which I intend to put to you and subsequently to face openly. I think that we can and must directly approach the entrepreneurs and invite them publicly to consider financing our project for one year. Let us keep in mind that our difficulties are not only of an economic order but are even more of a financial order. For example, are they and are we frightened at the idea of a long-term "loan" to the Trans-national Radical Party? In the case that this turned out to be difficult or impossible, another idea would be to promote financing for certain parts of the project.

All of this makes evident the essential importance of membership.

The Members

Our bet has once again been placed, as I mentioned at the start, on our ability to win the direct consensus of the citizens. By experience and choice we know that this parameter - the member - with whom at various moments in our history we have tested the concreteness of our political operations, is entrusted to our capacity of initiative, to knowing how to identify and choose political battles that people will join which until yesterday were prevalent in Italy and which are now so in Europe and other places too. This is a conviction and a task that cannot only be mine or the leadership group's but which must be the choice and conviction of all the party members. This is the first immediate, concrete result that we must achieve, because as I said at the congress, either our project is the common heritage of all the members or we will have no possibility at all of being numerous enough by the end of the year in Italy and elsewhere to imagine that we can proceed with our party activities.

Two Verifications

In April and in June

Thus a first problem immediately presents itself: that of verifying if what we will be able to put into effect little by little is consistent with the results we want to obtain. Therefore I believe it is necessary for us to set ourselves some intermediate goals which will allow us to verify in time the validity of our operations. In my opinion, if by the end of June we have not managed to enrol at least 5,000 Italian citizens in the party and 1,000 in other countries, our probabilities of success are in danger of being hopelessly compromised.

To ensure a reasonable hope of reaching this goal by the end of June an intermediate verification would be helpful, and it seems to me that the end of April would be a logical date for this: by that time 3,000 new members in Italy and at least 500-600 abroad are, in my opinion, necessary to continue with good chances of success. This is a hypothesis that I put to you and which I believe you should consider attentively in order to reach a decision.

The hypothesis is partly based on one consideration: the effects of our action can have faster repercussions in Italy than in other countries where the work of setting up and investment, necessary to an efficient membership campaign, is slow. Of course, this is a consideration open to doubt and your evaluation of it is necessary.

The motion gives us six issues on which to direct our commitment and energies: they are issues which call up tradition, history, the party's struggles.

The Conference-Meeting On The Trans-National Party

The preliminary and provisory nature of the planned trans-national choice does not exempt us however from immediately making it the subject of dialogue and discussion not only within the party but also with others close to us or interested in our existence and our success. The problem has already been posed by the Party President Bruno Zevi who has suggested organising a conference-meeting entitled "Trans-National, How, Why, With Whom?" in which to directly involve and interest Italian politicians, parliamentarians and intellectuals, above all in the lay-Socialist sphere, to open the debate on the topicality and the prospects of the trans-national party. Bruno Zevi in collaboration with Gianfranco Spadaccia and Maria Teresa Di Lascia, has taken on the task of realising this initiative which will take place in Rome by the first half of March.

Four or five reports are scheduled by Radical Party exponents and ten or twelve by people from the outside.

One of the important aspect of this undertaking is that the conference-meeting after being held in Italy can be easily exported to other countries as the basis for a broader discussion and illustration of the reasons for the "trans-national party".

Factors Influencing The Choice Of Programme

Several factors present themselves to the attention of all that could favour the necessary choices in drawing up a programme.

The first element is the need that I feel to aim essentially at campaigns for actions and struggles which would be considered valid in all the countries in which we tend to operate. I believe, in fact, that it would certainly be an error to dedicate substantial parts of our small resources to needs that would be congenial to one country but not to others. On this consideration too, concerning which the data at my disposal is probably insufficient, I ask for your opinion and advice.

The Seminar Of The Parliamentary Groups

A second factor, even if a less direct one, which could contribute to the choice of priorities or their efficacy, are the results of the consideration that must be given by the European Federalist Parliamentary Groups of the Chamber of Deputies, the Federalist European Ecologists of the Senate in Italy and the Radicals in the European Parliament on the different orientation to be adopted in order to respond in the most adequate terms and manner to the demands being made on their operations by the decisions of the party congress. In relation to this problem it has already been decided to return to an old custom and to hold a four-day seminar of the Groups in a place suited to favouring the maximum concentration and dedication. We are waiting confidently the results of the seminar, certain that our comrades in Parliament will give us substantial contributions for resolving our common commitment. The preparation of the seminar is entrusted to the group whips with the collaboration of Peppino Calderisi.

The Priorities:

A United States Of Europe Immediately

Time and resources are strictly limited. Therefore, also with regard to the six issues of general interest indicated in the motion, I think it is indispensable to establish priorities. They cover such a broad area that to consider them all together on the same level would inevitably lead to a deleterious dispersion in my opinion.

The first place must be given to the question of the United States of Europe, and in particular to those actions which are most directly concerned with overcoming the Community's institutional crises and the "stalemate" in which the process of the European Community's political integration finds itself.

In this regard we can already point with legitimate pride to a first success of no small importance.

Many of you know of the proposal advanced by Pannella at the time of the Bologna congress which was intended to make the party take the initiative in convening in one place the members of the European Parliament together with members of the parliaments of the individual EC states to elect a single Prime Minister and Commission Chairman to reactivate the process of political unity in Europe by means of the Spinelli project for giving constituent powers to the European Parliament. Pannella's proposal was followed up by Roberto Cicciomessere who prepared a document and a motion to be submitted first of all to the Italian Parliament for study and evaluation.

Through the work of Francesco Rutelli, Gianfranco Spadaccia and other comrades in Parliament, the motion was signed by 260 deputies in the Chamber and 120 senators in the Senate. Among the signers were Piccoli, Martelli, Martinazzoli, Altissimo, Goria and Del Pennino in the Chamber, and Pertini, Saragat, Valiani and Bobbio in the Senate. The motions was presented on February 3 to the Chamber's Foreign Relations Commission. This result, which was perhaps unhoped-for, was of obvious importance and puts us in a position to continue the initiative with confidence. The characteristic of this initiative is to involve the national parliaments directly in the process of building a United States of Europe since at the moment it appears clear that neither the governments of the member states nor the European Parliament itself has the power to actuate the Treaty of Union which Spinelli managed to get approved by the European Parliament in its first legislature.

The proposal to convene the "general States of the European peoples" to elect the President of Europe and the President of the Community Executive coincides in fact with the need constantly more felt that Europe should speak with one voice and that two prestigious authorities whose legitimacy derives directly from the European Parliament and the national parliaments, may be able to prevail over the interests of the national and Communitarian bureaucracies that paralyse all the decisional capacities of the Council and the Commission.

Similar hypotheses were furthermore advanced in France by the ex President of the Republic Valery Giscard d'Estaing ("il faut donner un visage à l'Europe") and presently under discussion in the Institutional Commission of the European Parliament is a proposed report of the Hon. Mr. Sutra De Germa on the subject.

Besides these principle objectives there is also on one side the proposal, already made by the European Parliament itself, to ask for the conferring of constituent powers, and on the other side an entirely Radical position relating to the correlation between security and the respecting of civil and human rights. This last point has particular meaning for us because it tends to commit the Community's member states to earmark a percentage (tendentially 2%) of military expenditures to the defense of civil and human rights in Europe according to the provisions of the Third Basket of the Helsinki Treaty, thus putting the motion for the "General States" in direct relation to the issue of "anti-totalitarianism and human rights" indicated as the second point of the motion approved by the Bologna congress.

The Two Policy Lines

Our action must now proceed - simultaneously - along two lines of policy: the first and most important is directed to the other member states of the Community while the other is directed to the members and citizens to involve the largest number of figures in politics, enterprise, the arts and culture of each country.

In order to start up the action with regard to the members of Parliament, Roberto Cicciomessere has already compiled the mailing list and the other necessary preparations for making sure the text of the motion gets to each of them personally. It is accompanied by a letter that illustrates the intended goals and asks each of them to make a direct effort on behalf of the motion within the institutional sphere to which he belongs. It is just as well to remind you here that it is a matter of getting the document into the hands of more than 10,000 people. When the occasion arises we will ask the members of parliament too to enrol in the trans-national party clarifying the importance and meaning of this move in the light of the party's decision made in Bologna, valid not only for Italy, to refrain from entering the elections and to do away with all obstacles to taking out party membership that would be due to motives of competition with the political group or party to which each one of them belongs already.

Once the members of parliament have received the document we will have to put into action the things necessary to extend and consolidate the effects: the executive group - to be precise, all of us - will have to work for obtaining as much direct contact as possible with those who have been sent the document.

It will be necessary to divide the various countries among ourselves according to criteria and an agenda which Gianfranco Dell'Alba and Roberto Cicciomessere must prepare at once. All those who are directly involved with this phase of the initiative will have to take into account their need to visit the places in question for a period that can vary from one to two weeks. This phase of the operation will probably take up the entire month of March. With the concrete beginning of the initiative for the "general states", the party will should be able to have at its disposition a first supporting element too for the acquisition of new members: I am thinking, for example, of the creation in Italy and the other countries of committees for the gathering of memberships, significant and important ones if possible, which could at the same time promote more specific actions for getting new members.

I believe that an action within the sphere of the European Parliament should be promoted as well by presenting and obtaining a vote on an emergency resolution analogous to the one passed by the Italian Parliament. This too is a task that necessarily must weigh on Gianfranco Dell'Alba and his members of the European Parliament. At the end of March or the beginning of April it will be possible to draw up a first balance. Until then we can expect there to be one or more important meetings or manifestations here in Brussels and/or elsewhere.

Human Rights And "The Party Of The Refuseniks"

The issue that in my opinion we should take up in second place, as is furthermore indicated in the motion, is the one of anti-totalitarianism and human rights. It is a theme that in its immediacy affects us all and puts us in a direct relationship to the trans-national project. Freedom of the individual is inseparable from the concrete possibility which every human being needs to profess and affirm his own ideas and convictions. On the other hand the issue affirms a right which does not and cannot have [national] boundaries.

I consider it useful to add here an interpretation of this issue given by Giovanni Negri: human rights as the "Refusenik Party". I think it is a happy interpretation. It immediately brings to mind a real situation with which the party concerned itself in recent years with dedication and considerable success. Nevertheless the refusenik is not a condition limited to the Soviet Union where it indubitably had a peculiar and specific character. In the world, in Europe, there are other millions of refuseniks whose condition is not so peculiar and so evident, but which are nevertheless just as true and real. We must succeed in bringing them out, all of them, wherever they are. Giovanni proposes an adoption procedure by means of which to make them integral members of the party. For now, just a few examples: Baghwan (1) is a refusenik in many countries on various continents (and this, among other things, is an obligation for us imposed by a precise motion approved by the congress); Paula Cooper has become one in

the United States where the death penalty, applied not to a minor, but to the crimes she committed as a minor, would bring about the collapse of credibility of the fight against the death penalty; a refusenik is Slawomir Dutkiewicz, the Polish conscientious objector; refuseniks are certainly the Gypsies and the immigrants (Turks, Jugoslavs, Algerians, Tunisians, and "blacks"in Europe.

We must identify and make a list of names of people whose situations, possibly little known, would have such particular meaning and relevance as to make of them legal cases, cases for law, on a trans-national level and with trans-national reverberations. A list of those whom the party commits itself to "liberating", to get back for them, that means, within 1988 the rights they have been denied. I believe that Giovanni should take on the task of preparing a "Manifesto of the Adopted", of preparing the research for the identification and the composition of the list as well as the programme for launching this action to be submitted for consideration to the Federal Council at its next meeting.

Non-Violence

Allow me here to make a digression, but only an apparent one: the party's recourse to non-violence. I am obliged to tell you that this is a subject which makes me feel dismay, at a loss, disarmed. It is not part of my history and, perhaps, not even of my culture. But it is part of the history and culture of the party and I must face it. The party and all of us must put the question to ourselves again and face with prudent determination the use of non-violence as a method of struggle. I, let me repeat, am not capable, and yet I feel it my duty to exhort you all to deep and attentive reflection on the matter. There are among you comrades, from Roberto to Gianfranco Spadaccia, from Adele to Emma to Adelaide among the not-so-young members; and among the youngest ones from Francesco to Olivier, from Sandro Ottoni to Paolo Pietrosanti to Ivan Novelli to many others; and certainly I will have forgotten some names that should have been mentioned before others who have practised with Pannella and after Pannella

non-violence at crucial moments in the history of this party. It is them, one of them that I expect to take the initiative on this question, to help me, to help us all, to understand if and when and in what terms the party can and should have recourse to it.

The confrontation with totalitarian institutions of Eastern Europe: put Glasnost and Perestroika to the test.

Returning to the issue of "human rights", I call up on this point the need suggested by Giovanni Negri in his report to the congress, which was subsequently taken up by others on more than one occasion, of raising the level of confrontation with the totalitarian institutions of the Eastern European countries. This need appears more than ever urgent in view of the accords between the USA and the USSR on nuclear armaments and the areas of crisis that once again threaten to put the Helsinki Treaty into the shade and transfer the summit on human rights to the level of reciprocal concessions. The promises of freedom and democracy offered by the Perestroika and Glasnost also seem to have fully satisfied Western public opinion.

Therefore there is need of an initiative that will reverberate greatly in international public opinion to put to the test the true substance of the presumed process of democratisation in the Eastern countries. In Italy, one can furthermore expect the idea of taking up a battle with the help of the Parliamentary groups to ensure the right to vote in municipal elections to immigrants after five years of residence even if they do not have citizenship. It is an undertaking that can also be proposed by other political and labour union forces - in particular by ACLI [Associazioni Cristiane dei Lavoratori Italiani] to CL [Communione e Liberazione], from CARITAS [a Catholic social assistance organisation] to Mani Tese [an assistance organisation for refugees].

Still with regard to Italy, one should remember that today the government disposes of an agency for human rights which this year is receiving financing amounting to five billion [lire] as a consequence of the European Federalist Parliamentary Group of the Chamber actuated on the occasion of the financial law.

Yugoslavia

With regard to Yugoslavia, it is possible to link up activities in the human rights sector with an initiative proposed by Cinder Ottoni to solicit and promote the membership of this country in the European Community. This is an initiative that should allow for the gathering of memberships in this country by both establishing a league of Yugoslavian intellectuals as well as by collecting signatures with tables set up in the streets.

Baghwan

Particular attention must be given for starting at once the most opportune action to implement the contents of the congressional motion regarding Baghwan's freedom of movement and right of entry at least into Italy.

Other working hypotheses may be possible with specific reference to "human rights" regarding the possibility of distributing written material in the Eastern European countries, making telecom links and transmitting radio broadcasts. These are very problematic aspects whose practicability must first of all be evaluated and whose eventual realisation must be verified in the total picture of expending resources.

In promoting and co-ordinating these activities, Antonio Stanger must be able to make use of both the results of Giovanni Negri's work relating to the list of the "adopted" as well as the contribution of those comrades who have already had direct and significant experiences. I am thinking, for example, of the things Emma Bonino did in and for Israel, of Dupuis and Pietrosanti in Poland, of Ivan Novelli for Paula Cooper and of what Ottoni began to do in Yugoslavia.

The Other Four Issues Of The Motion

Defining the priorities for the other four points enunciated in the motion is more difficult.

For the European and "human rights" issues it has been possible to come up with several working hypotheses that are quite precise and specific and allow us to partial but significant goals and deadlines even if they do not as yet constitute a true programme. But with regard to the other four issues it is at the moment more difficult to define goals and deadlines. For the most part it is a question of satisfying needs of information or of creating preliminary conditions for possible action.

Extermination And Under-development

With regard to extermination by hunger we have to come to terms with the substantial failure of years and years of Radical struggle in Italy and Europe.

In Italy we have managed in a few years to increase almost tenfold the funds earmarked for so-called development aid, but what we wanted and hoped for - the overthrowing through Italy's extraordinary commitment of the whole philosophy of co-operation with developing countries and putting the defence of life and the populations' needs in first place - has not come about. The law for emergency intervention elapsed because of the political indifference of the government and the major parties.

As in the case of the United States of Europe, we must now find a different approach for effectively taking up again this fight on a European level. Among us the debate has scarcely begun. As a point of departure we have at our disposal:

1) a certain credibility in Italy as yet;

2) the heritage of the actions of the Food and Disarmament International which succeeded in getting a law passed in Belgium similar to the Italian one and worked for launching analogous legislation in France (the bill has been signed by various members of parliament and supported by thousands of labour unionists, but is essentially being blocked by the government) and in Spain where the prospects are favourable.

3) the present willingness of the president of the OAU (Organisation of African Unity), Kaunda - one of the twelve heads of state who signed the Rome Manifesto in spring of 1986 against extermination from hunger - to come in May to Europe and Africa on the eve of the UNO assembly. This last date could be a point of departure for taking up again one of our initiatives and proposals. This presupposes, however, on the one hand a quantitative and qualitative documentation and analysis on our part of the failure of both Italy's and Europe's co-operation policies; on the other hand several basic theoretical choices on the alternatives we propose to ourselves. A new policy that faces the problem of hunger and under-development presupposes a positive overcoming of the present relations between ex colonialist countries and their ex colonies - relations that are the other face, equally negative, of the old colonialism and ensure that the myth of "national" independence is the best cover for the worst forms of eco

nomic neo-colonialism.

Against this state of affairs one must instead courageously affirm the necessity of politically involving the European and Western countries, and in general of the Northern Hemisphere, in action for the development of Third World countries.

There are two paths along which one can proceed which are not opposing alternatives:

1) One can be of forms of adoption between single European and single African states with forms of direct participation of the former in the development of the latter;

2) Another could be proposing to the entire European Community of a kind of Marshall Plan analogous to what the United States of America undertook in favour of the defeated European countries and the entire European continent at the end of the Second World War; a plan that Europe could implement on its own in Africa taking advantage of the co-operation of the EEC-ACP (Africa-Caribbean-Pacific) Association and propose to the United States and Canada for the Latin American countries.

It is a matter, as you can see, of several premises upon which reflection and debate have only just begun.

Drugs And Anti-Prohibtionism

With regard to anti-prohibitionism and the fight against crime, we must be able to count on the organisation of a great international conference to be held by June in Rome or Brussels, a conference to which our comrades of CO.R.A. - the association established in Rome for developing initiatives consistent with the party's objectives - are dedicating themselves and who have in Marco Taradash their point of reference.

The issue of law and the defence of the constitutional state is presently entrusted to the work and the initiative of Mario De Stefano in collaboration with Sergio D'Elia. Here too it is a matter of a research phase among whose points of major interest are: a) the definition of a "European Juridical Space"; b) a series of actions and campaigns to try creating a European penal process based on the accusation system, the "Charter of Convicts Rights", to give greater powers to the European Court of Human Rights and to launch a "European Charter for Minorities".

The last subject is extremely topical in a Europe that must face the problem of the integration of millions of non-Europeans and where constantly more racism and nationalism is manifesting itself.

Ecology

The opinion is quite widespread that the issue of ecology can no longer be limited to questions such as hunting and the atom which, while having had their first supporters in the party, have become the heritage of many other political forces, at least in Italy.

The ozone hole could be a suitable issue for the new Radical initiative in this sector. In this regard, one might first of all prepare a law that adequately regulates the use of substances that are destroying the ozone layer. The proposal would have to be ready for the beginning of March and presented to the Italian Parliament in order, then, to become the basis for collecting signatures in spring.

Militant action would have to find adequate support in the mass media with goal of an "ozone march". In this regard one should keep in mind that there ought soon to be a discussion in the European Parliament of a proposed resolution prepared by the Environmental Commission. This initiative could contribute to the launching of the membership campaign.

It is important to know if this issue could be of interest and a cause for mobilisation in other countries too.

Along with and at the same time as this initiative the party ought to urgently acquire documentation and develop adequate contacts with scientific circles to go more deeply into other questions such as the spreading of deserts, the pollution of agriculture and water, acid rain.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Shree Rajneesh Baghwan - Spiritual leader of an Indian cult, expelled from the United States and refused entry into Italy as well.