ABSTRACT:

1. The difficult choice between the refusal of war and the need to oppose violence.

2. The failure of non-violent alternatives has lead us to support the reasons of legality. The need to stop the aggressor, to free Kuwait and to prevent Saddam Hussein from becoming, in the specific crisis of the international balance, a model to be copied.

3. A painful and convinced choice, but a timely choice. There are no traces of fundamentalism in our YES. We must avoid creating barriers between those who adopted different choices, without fanaticisms of any kind. We must not transform our confrontation into a clash between two impotences.

4. Europe, armaments, human rights and democracy, right to life: these are the subjects on which is is urgently necessary to resume the discussion among us and the political battle if we want to build peace instead of just invoking it.

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As non-violents, we hoped there could be an alternative to war, and, within the limits of our scanty possibilities, we also operated in order for such alternative to be applied. But when after a six-month embargo and the expiry of the deadline, we have been forced to acknowledge the beginning of the military operations for the liberation of Kuwait, in fulfilment of the U.N. resolutions, we agreed on supporting the Italian participation in the war operations.

We intend to defend and justify the reasons for such choice. It had not been an easy choice, but a painful and arduous one, as always when there is a conflict between equally important values: in this case, on the one hand there was the refusal of war, on the other the assertion of legality and the need to oppose aggression and violence.

Above all, we felt the attempt which many carried out in those days to reverse the responsibilities was unacceptable and outrageous; almost to say that it was the Arab and Western countries that sent their troops in the Gulf to impose the enforcement of the embargo, to defend the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and to impose the liberation of Kuwait, that triggered the conflict, and not Saddam Hussein, who wiped out an entire State from the political map in a single night, on August 2, reducing it to an Iraqi province.

Clearly, we are distressed by the trials and the sufferances which the innocent Iraq population, which had already been severely oppressed by the bloody war against Iran imposed by the dictator, will now have to sustain; we are distressed by the trials and the sufferances of the populations of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and indirectly of Jordan and of many other countries. However, we cannot understand how the many opponents of the U.N. resolutions and of the armed intervention can have canceled from their memory and feelings the sufferance of 1 million and 600 thousand Kuwaiti citizens, who have been occupied, raped, deprived of their assets and of their freedom, and that of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, Filipinos, Indians, Pakistans, Palestinians and Africans who had migrated to Kuwait in the hope to find jobs and wealth.

To those who maintain that war must no longer be accepted as a means for the solution of international conflicts, we answer that we too consider it a defeat that the entire international community, and the United States above all, continues to rely on the exclusive force of weapons as the only deterrent against violence, and that the prevailing culture and interests of the ruling classes have so far prevented even to explore and experiment the potentiality and the effectiveness of any non-violent political alternative with the destabilizing weapons of information, economic sanctions, political isolation. It is that same culture which has allowed the almost unrestrained expansion of that military-industrial complex which has generated a cynical arms and death market. And which now produces the tragical contradiction of countries that must fight in the Gulf against the army of that same dictator whom they themselves have armed over the years. We believe the Radical Party has the merit of having fought against

this scandalous arms trade long before the Gulf war broke out, conducting, especially during the Iran-Iraq war, a constant political and parliamentary initiative aimed at identifying and punishing the persons responsible, and at making it cease or at least subjecting it to the control of the law.

Nonetheless, having stated this as non-violents, we must also firmly assert that yielding to violence and aggression cannot be considered an acceptable method to solve international conflicts. On the contrary, this would have meant an encouragement for further aggressions and further violences, and would have laid the foundations for even more widespread and bloody wars for the countries of the Gulf and of the Middle East and for humanity at large. Many have questioned the validity of the example of Münich: it has been said that Saddam Hussein is not Hitler. Just because his armies are not directly threatening our own borders, and because his missiles land on Arab and Israeli cities only? Aren't the war against Iran, the massacre of the Kurdish populations, the use of chemical weapons against his own people, the occupation of Kuwait, precedents enough?

Therefore, it is the refusal to yield to the violence of the aggressor that lead us to assume the responsibility of supporting the intervention. We were motivated by two specific concerns: first of all, the necessity to avoid undermining, and on the contrary defending and enhancing the U.N.'s newly-found capacity - acquired thanks to the end of the crossed vetoes of the two super-powers - to intervene in regional crises and the actual possibility to enforce its resolutions. We believe that any progress, no matter how small, in the direction of a juster international order, based on the law instead of on force or even worse on violence, on national and religious intolerance and on the ever-present and widespread use of wars (and the internal wars in Liberia, Somalia, Sudan and Lebanon are no less serious than those between States), cannot arise from a utopian world government, the premises of which are non-existant, but only from a positive evolution of the current instruments of international law, no matter

how fragile and imperfect they are. Also, we fear that the crisis of an international balance which is no doubt despicable, in that it is based on fear of an atomic war, such as the one that characterized almost half a century, and the possibility of a crisis destroying one of the two super-powers that have ensured it, can make Saddam Hussein become a model for every dictator of the world to copy. And this we consider a possibility to be averted by all means.

We are all but convinced that the conclusion of this trial of strength will solve all the problems, and that once it is concluded the realm of the law will replace the one of force. On the contrary, we realize that the problems on the carpet will remain extremely serious, and that there will be tremendous difficulties in solving them. But we also think that yielding to the violence of Saddam Hussein would have aggravated the global situation and made everything more difficult.

We respect all those who, like the Quakers, consider the rejection of violence and war as an absolute religious and moral imperative; nonetheless, we believe that the task of political non-violence is that of creating valid alternatives to the recourse to force in the construction of peace and in the struggle against injustice, oppression and violence; once these alternatives have failed, we ask equal respect for the choice of those who consider the reaction against the aggressor as a priority.

Therefore, as far as our choice is concerned, we consider ourselves neither fundamentalists nor fanatics, and we appeal to all those who have chosen to say "NO" without intolerance or fanaticism. These opposed choices must not create a barrier for the future. Once this war is over, the first problem to be tackled will be that of removing the causes that lead to this situation, and preventing other phenomenons like Saddam Hussein.

We must already start thinking about constructing peace, not just within the Radical Party, but in the context of its transnational action and organization. If we fail to do this, the confrontation between the two positions could soon turn into a debate and a confrontation between two impotences. In the haste of defending our opposed choices, we risk forgetting that we were excluded from the actual decision concerning the way in which the intervention was to be conducted, and that this occurred not only because of a lack of serious non-violent alternatives, but also because of the lack of a European presence politically and militarily comparable to the U.S.: even if an alternative to a military solution had been possible, there was no political subject with the necessary force and the credibility to impose it. Even if we had wanted to continue the embargo together with other pressure means, as an alternative to military intervention, there was no legitimation to propose it and impose it: it would have been i

nconceivable to ensure the effectiveness of the embargo and of any other non-violent policy in the absence of an adequate military force; from a military point of view, the ratio between the U.S. and the European Community in the Gulf is ten to one, with only three States out of twelve directly present. Thus, we should remember Altiero Spinelli's warning: that is, that either Europe faces its international responsibilities, voluntarily unifying itself, or it will be forced, time after time, to accept the initiatives of the U.S.; thus, the anti-American demonstrations, the autonomist claims, the pseudoneutralist opportunisms, and even the peace marches, are but one of the expressions of this impotence and of this compulsive position of subordination.

The initiative and the battle to interrupt this lack of responsibility of the European governments and to build a credible unity and Community presence of Europe; the commitment to stop the military-industrial complex, the military supplies trade and to ban chemical, bacteriological and nuclear weapons; the need to stress that the centre of the difficult process to assert a new international law is the assertion of the right to democracy and the respect of human rights; an immediate and firm reprise of the efforts for a cooperation with all the States that ensure the respect of these fundamental rights, starting with the elementary right to life in the poorest countries of the Third World: these are the points, on which we feel it is necessary to resume dialogue, regardless of the present divisions, and to find a convergence of intentions and political goals; if we do not want to protest helplessly against war, we must do more than just invoke peace: we must construct it, by creating the adequate conditions.