ABSTRACT: On 8 January 1991, Italian deputies from the European Federalist Parliamentary Group, elected as Radical Party candidates, and from the Green Party Parliamentray Group, presented a motion on the Gulf crisis. On 16 January a resolution was presented, and was accepted by the Italian government as a recommendation.

(The New Party, n.2, July 1991)

The final version of the motion obliged the Italian government "to address an urgent and solemn appeal to all the democratic governments of the world, to the Assembly, the Security Council, and the Secretary General of the UN, for:

the immediate preparation and realization of a large-scale information offensive to be directed at public opinion in Iraq, the Arab countries, and the rest of the world, with all the instruments provided by modern technology and the power of the forces involved, in defence of rights and of peace, of the decisions of the UN and of the independence of Kuwait, through the use of the powerful nonviolent weapons of the dissemination of the truth, the denouncement of the crimes of the past and the present, and of those currently being planned - wars, massacres, and oppression in Iraq itself - the denouncement, that is, of the true nature of the Baghdad regime and its leader; a large-scale information offensive which will allow the victims and opposition forces in Iraq, and more generally in the Arab world, to speak against the dictator, demonstrating and practising solidarity towards the Iraqi people, showing that the final political defeat of Saddam Hussein, if he refuses to accept the UN injunctions, is the equ

ivalent of liberation; an offensive to be carried out with the utmost energy at the most opportune and suitable time, before moving on to any use of military arms."

The resolution obliges the government to make an immediate request to the Council of the European Community for the convocation of a "Conference on Human Rights and Security in the Mediterranean and the Middle East".