ABSTRACT: The statement of vote at the Italian Chamber of Deputies of Sergio Stanzani, first secretary of the Radical Party, on the resolutions concerning the situation in the Gulf. A few hours after the beginning of the military operations against Iraq, the Chamber had been called upon to decide on the participation of the Italian military contingent in the Gulf in these same operations, enforcing Resolution n.678 of the U.N. Security Council, which authorized the "use of all necessary means" to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

The Radical Secretary, specifying that the choice the members of Parliament are called to make belongs entirely to the realm of politics and not to ethics or morals, states that the positions assumed by the Radical members of Parliament, present in several parliamentary groups, who expressed positions both in favour and against the participation of the Italian mission, all attest, to the same degree, the Radical Party's non-violent ideals, and "our capacity to be champions of peace and legality".

(Chamber of Deputies - Shorthand transcript of the hearing of 17 January 1991)

Madam President, Mr. Prime Minister, honourable colleagues, the act which the Chamber is called upon to commit in a few minutes belongs entirely and exclusively to the responsibility and nobility of politics and of political morality.

Whoever, in this circumstance, claims to attribute other values and meanings to this choice, whoever claims we are confronted with an ethical and moral choice, and therefore draws a line between good and evil disregarding political responsibility and advisability, is responsible for an unacceptable act of intolerance, factiousness, and, in one word, violence.

The Radical Party, honourable colleagues, through its members of Parliament, has urged this Chamber 77 times, from 1882 to date, to react against the political infamy of backing the brutal and insane dictator of Baghdad, who has carried out a policy of war, extermination of his own and of other populations, and violence.

Neither the Palace barons nor the barons of the public squares, nor the citizens, who have remained silent, and have not, unlike us non-violents, devoted day after day, with a precise commitment, to the creation of peace, for the life of rights and the right to life, are entitled to give lessons to the others.

The Radical Party, Madam President, is not here as such, as can be gathered by the names of the parliamentary groups which its members of Parliament have created. Even I am not speaking here as the First Secretary of the party of non-violence, the Party that by choosing the symbol of Gandhi has proved to have correctly identified the main crux of our time to be solved. Nonetheless, I am proud to recall in this Chamber that this Party is made of Communist, Socialist, Green and European federalist members of Parliament, democrats and independents. All of them, with their different but equally profound and responsible attitudes, testify to the same degree to our ideals and our capacity to be champions of peace and legality.

Everyone, I am sure, as all Italian citizens, will find further, vital reasons, in these hours and even more in the hours to come, to invite each and all to contribute not anger and outbursts of distress and hatred, but their concrete support, which is an absolute priority if we want to give this army of political non-violence and democracy the force of a mass, in the absence of which the nonviolent individual, as Gandhi recalled and warned throughout all his existence, is left with no other option than choosing, between the opposed camps, the one in which violence is accompanied by the defence of legality. The Mahatma incessantly denounced the fact that cowardice, vileness and hypocrisy are more unacceptable than violence and war as such.

This war started on the 2nd of August, if not earlier. With our motion, we tried to rouse in all of you an awareness, an adequacy of political action for our country and for the world, which alone could have averted the use of weapons, albeit legitimate.

We have not been listened to. Violence and war will necessarily prevail, in the absence of a large, strong party, with thousand of militants operating every day contemporarily throughout the world. If this is ignored, if this is not acknowledged, then there is nothing left but to face the disaster.

Our history, which is made of voluntary conscientious objection, and experiences in prisons, is the basis for different votes, each containing a profound truth.

As we are speaking, three thousand Italian soldiers, together with hundreds of thousands of other soldiers, make up the camp which is trying to disarm, unfortunately not with the weapons we would have preferred, the dictator, the aggressor, the butcher of the Iraqis, Iranian men and women, of the Kurdish populations.

The whole of Europe, it seems, has decided to be present, albeit with a distressing lack of unity.

You have sown the wind, colleagues of the majority, barons of the Palace and of the public squares, and now we are reaping whirlwind. We will prevent you from doing this any longer, fighting the monsters that you yourselves have created.

That brigades of non-violence and peace be formed in the Radical Party, in Moscow as in Rome, in Baghdad as in New York; may they count thousands and thousands of new adherents every day.

May non-violence, legality and democracy live forever.