ABSTRACT: On October 31 and November 1-3, 1991, the Federal Council of the Radical Party held its meeting in Zagabria, Croatia. During the course of the debate on Nov.1, Marco Pannella made the following, particularly broad speech, lasting about one hour and 15 minutes.

After greeting the large number of participants and members - some of whom holding public and even governmental offices - who came from various parts of the ex Yugoslavia, and after thanking the EEC Commissioner Carlo Ripa di Meana for participating despite the hard conflict he was going to have with the English government, Pannella emphasises the danger of involution for Croatian democracy, dangers which are highlighted by, among other things, the conduct of the Croatian information media towards the non-violent Radicals. Then Pannella makes an ample reconaissance of the Yugoslavian problems, comparing them to the European situation of the Thirties, when the Western democracies made concessions first to Spain's Franco and then to Hitler, which - far from giving safe shelter to those democracies - led to Munich and the war. Despite the gravity of what the Serbian policy is producing, Europe and the EEC continue to refrain from acting, thus allowing Milosevic to occupy vast areas of Croatian territory,

to keep the Albanians of Kossovo from exercising their institutional prerogatives, and to deny the Serbs themselves their civil and democratic rights, thus behaving like Saddam Hussein recently did in Iraq.

So Pannella presents the problems connected with the creation of the trans-national party and enumerates the difficulties that block the holding of the Party Congress within a few weeks, in January, as some members would like. He says, however, that the Congress could be called, but only in order to stop the continuation of the uneasy situation created by the unjust criticisms which are pretexts made by several "traditional" Radicals within the party against the leaders and the decisions that the latter have taken in compliance with the decisions of the Congress for attempting to create the trans-national party.

(Note: the present text is a transcription, not reviewed by the author, of the speech as it was recorded by Radical Radio. For any problems of interpretation the recording, obviously, will be the authoritative source.)

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Dear Friends,

Rather than to make a speech, I am burdened with completing a report. Of course, I have not written this completion (I cannot get rid of this bad habit) and now I will take advantage of the fact that several circumstances, also slightly material and existential, give me the privilege of speaking after having already heard an important part of our speakers, of our debate, and also after having taken note yesterday of that extraordinary human and political contribution that saw a liberal minister, a Serbian leader, a Moslem, of the Sanjuk (1), the first member from Bosnia-Herzegovina of the Federal Council (but actually of the Party too, if we except a few scattered memberships from three or four years ago) decide to take on, to share the labour and the hope that being a Radical involves. And this, evidently, is a great help to me, as is the fact of having at this table Ivo Jelic, of having at this table the deputy from Dubrovnik, the fact of seeing here the vice-president of the Croatian government, of s

eeing others - friends, comrades - Croats, Slovenes, of ex Yugoslavia, however, share this labour by being here. At the same time, each of us ought to reflect a moment what would be happening if we were gathered together in - where should I say? - Rome or Moscow, surrounded by our normal activities, Parliamentary, party, family tasks. The fact that the vice-president of the government is here and the deputy from Dubrovnik (to limit myself to only two examples) while there is a war going on, and I would say even more - because it is even more - while there is an injustice going on, a human and political scandal that is the cause for something happening every minute which strikes at their concrete humanity and their responsibility while a great part of the government, of the Parliament, are or have been until one moment ago standing outside Dubrovnik trying to get in, and others in Rome, others in The Hague, in Paris and in many other places. This is probably a testimony that their will (and for this we thank

them very much), but above all their consciences allow them this choice which perhaps would be hard to understand for those closest to them, even perhaps their own parties, with all the other tasks that are cropping up for them at every moment.

I was very much helped by the speech we have just heard from Carlo Ripa di Meana. It enriched me, it favoured me in contrast to the previous schedule which had me speaking first. I would say that Carlo has offered us a synthesis, has articulated proposals and policies that show us how someone who is exposed in the front lines - and how he is! - how the more exposed he is, and by his own choice, in this front line, the more he warns us of the need of each of us to arm our own capacities and choices of organised articulation: not in order to sacrifice a small or large part of individual liberty on the altar of history and events, but rather in order to have this experience, this experiment in organisation, as a strengthening of each one's freedom and responsibility, thus overturning an old sensibility of an anarchic type that leads us to say in all cultures - that of the one-party countries, that of the countries of practising democracy, (1) that of the undeveloped countries - that to organise ourselves i

nto parties, to organise ourselves, is the necessary sacrifice for being able to save at least a part of our own capacities.

This is not what it is about. Even this orientation leads to party forms, to those ideologies, to those individual choices that are losers. And this last part of the century has shown it clamorously, highlighting how incredibly damned it was, how obtuse it was (for those who believe that the history of humanity is necessarily the history of human intelligence), how truly present the one-party Leviathan has been in our history and also in the countries of practising democracy where more and more, even for the people, the party system exists as if in reality it was a single party with marginal and subordinate branches - almost like a highly astute manoeuvre of history to make us accept this Leviathan of non-liberty and of sacrifice: the sacrifice of co-existence, the sacrifice of ideals as well as practical sacrifices.

In the last two or three weeks, Carlo Ripa di Meana has been an actor on the stage of history, not, alas, Italian history, but of British history (to a small degree) and news chronicles. Many people and the major British newspapers have identified this Commissioner - we might say according to a certain scheme - this minister of the Community of 340-350 million inhabitants, as the enemy. He, in fact, in the face of the risk of irreparable damage to that earth, to that water, to that nature, to that flora, to that reality, and in face of the almost certain reiterated choice to destroy nature and the habitat and the environment in the illusion of efficiency brought by a train - or something - which would save twenty minutes for supposed travellers, he was so bold as to send a personal letter (and not a private one, thus making it dutiful to render it in some way public), a personal letter of reproof to a minister! He was attacked as the spokesman and agent, perhaps even a bit sadistic, of the perverse bure

aucratic and aggressive determination of Brussels in regard to the autonomy of nations (and they may even have said of peoples...). Thus an image was devised - and what an image for a good part of their British readers! - of Carlo the Ripper. And one doesn't understand how, since if anything it is Carlo who wants to avoid the ripping of forests, the ripping of history, the ripping of the trees or millenary entities, those few, furthermore, that still survive. And he found himself the other day giving an interview in which he said... and he is a little astonished to discover that whereas in Great Britain, in the rest of Europe, and within the Commission there was a battle with a front line formed in the face of this institutional duty of his, in Italy practically no one knew anything about it, and the few who did know obviously didn't give a damn.

But this is a matter, comrades, which we most urgently need to reflect upon regarding the mechanisms of practising democracy. Precisely because we are intransigent democrats and not "democratisers" we have convictions and we aggregate around them: there is a sense in being united if that can help us to save on the by now unbearable costs - in terms of life - of mistaken experiences, if we can manage to avoid that the worst of each experience will have to be relived everywhere else in order for this experience to become part of our common strength.

To gain a better foothold here where we find ourselves, yesterday we were speaking with our comrade and friend Tomac and I told him (I want to share with you this feeling, these two different replies which surely contain together more truth than we imagine) - I told him that during the Yugoslavian dictatorship - centralised, central and Communist, even if a national kind - and I being a European deputy who since '79 had never missed coming here a single year, but above all a Radical who came with dozens of Radical men and women from all countries, but mostly Italians, to make militant propaganda and distribute technical and political information, to get myself expelled for trying to break the flat, somewhat obtuse conformity of a situation in which Yugoslavia continued to cover as with a blanket the vivacity and vitality of its own needs; so then, I came - under the dictatorship! - and the Vjesnik, the Delo, in short all the main newspapers, radio and television put the news of my arrival on the front p

age (I can give you the proof); and I was the representative of a tiny, more-or-less Italian party, an isolated Eurodeputy together with two others in the European Parliament. Sometimes the interviews, incomprehensibly, came to two in a stay of four - or three - days. And despite the fact that I unfortunately do not speak Croatian, I held a direct line until three in the morning on the radio - the de facto government radio (because otherwise they couldn't exist).

Today it seems evident that all of you and thus all of us, including me, with our however slight but still certain substance, are the ones who fight (as pacifists, with non-violent arms) and so we are comrades in arms for a life under law and the rights of the Croats and Slovenes. But above all for the Serbs, because the first victims here in ex Yugoslavia, the first and most desperate are the Serbs who must submit to the racist terrorism and intolerance of Milosevic, his nature, his voice, his good faith. This is a person, a racist, this is a line with which five years ago they sincerely explained to us that the Albanians of Kossovo were to be respected, certainly, "but" - I have heard it to the point of nausea, this is what the rulings classes are like comrades, as it were... "but the Albanians, let's say it under our breath, are all rapists of nuns, children, old women"... So then, in private they confide to you that this is the real truth, even if out of tolerance they don't say it - they are eviden

tly people whose rise to power must be feared and resisted. And yet, today, with practising democracy, your presence, the presence of so many democratic representatives and activists from all over Europe - and with at least a few presences or a substantial African presence here, on this front line - so then, this is ignored.

Ten days ago when we decided to confirm the event, neither you - am I right, Tomac? - nor I knew if there might not be bombs exploding again in the city or if the trip here might not be dangerous. We did not know it, we confirmed it.

Why? There is someone I would like to tell - but to whom it is futile to tell it - that non-violent arms are not absolute, they are like the others. And to those, for example, who sometimes tell me when we are about to start a hunger strike that one must look out for one's health, I say: But of course! Bear with me. If someone does not believe in non-violence and hence believes in just, democratic violence, he takes up his arms, doesn't he? And in so doing he is risking his health a bit. In war the right kind of logic is to lay your health on the line voluntarily before it is taken from you. So, if someone is non-violent and, for example, understands history better - excuse me if once again I cite Italian history - he understands better the history of names like Pacciardi, like Rosselli - names in our history - than the history of Italian troops sent by Fascist Italy in support of Franco, of whom there were yet many more. If one understands better those who went to risk their health for the Span

ish Republic fighting against a military coup, well then, I can only say: here we have Rhodes, here everything is exploding; here we have Spain, here everything is exploding; here we have Yugoslavia, here everything is exploding.

It is the equivalent: and so we are here. With the arms of non-violence, but risking something, with only one calculated and serious risk however, as an additional manifestation of hope and not despair, to strengthen that which we are allowed or asked to give, the limpid practise of dialogue, tolerance and democracy, and of democracy in the institutions and not only against the institutions: that is to say - beyond, on the far side of all this professionalism and expertise - this datum of human integrity for which we can and must say that we are here at the side of the Croats, at the side of the Slovenes, and the Montenegrans too; but above all we are at the side of those who have lost the right even to the appearance of being victims, that is to say the women and the men of Serbia. Just as when we made our moves, some of us in a certain way, on the Middle East, what impelled us was certainly the defence of Kuwait and its law, it was certainly the defence of the positions of the new U.N.O. , it was cer

tainly a non-violent (and not pacifist) position, but above all - and this is the scandalous thing - it was the defence of the Iraqis, sent to Kuwait or sent... where you will... were obliged to die by their butcher, massacring a million Iranians or a million Iraqis... Yes, there is the defence of the Curds, but at least the Curds, if they are massacred, one knows why they are massacred, whereas the Iraqis that die are massacred in the name of "the Fatherland", which is in reality in defence of their own Milosevic or Saddam. They do not even have the right to their own identity, their human dignity because they are nameless and it is right that they should die, it is right that they should kill!... and today we are inert, particularly "traditional" pacifists, we resign ourselves to seeing that democracy has not returned to Kuwait or is not installed there, to seeing Saddam being allowed - once again - to take hostage the right of life and death over the Iraqis, within the bounds of certain balances.

I fear that I must confess a few things, because if I continue - and Congress or not, we will eventually get to that point - continue to be not a Radical member of particular importance because of my age, eloquence, ability, cunning; if I should continue for the moment, and I shall continue, to be also a party leader and thus in any case someone who in his work - for better of for worse - will have repercussions on your public image and your work, I must and will go to the bottom of things: because we must have a clear understanding of this. I understand, for example, the difficulties of our Rom fellow deputies. There are also Rom in Serbia, and the Rom, like the Jews, have to be very careful, because when they discriminate against the Rom they do it by sending them into concentration camps and exterminating them, they discriminate in a somewhat different way... Therefore I understand (it was the problem posed by Cicciomessere) that the follow-up of our decisions on Yugoslavia and Europe which were take

n at preceding session - such a hard one - posed problems for the Romanian deputies and the Czechoslovakian deputies, because when one is responsible for the Gypsies too, of the Serbian or in any case Yugoslavian Rom, with this host,that takes over a bit of everything and everywhere, certainly there is some fear and I am far from condemning it: all the more in that we do not yet have a specific, solid political organisation, there is the danger of setting off a process of repression and while we offer respect to the Rom, we cannot guarantee that we will be present and able to defend them if they should be once again attacked due to the merits or the faults of our decisions.

I am aware, we all ought to be aware, that if the Party makes important decisions, and to make important decisions means that they risk being trampled on by reasons that surely are also a part of the opposite choices. Non-violence is something dramatic, it is entirely the opposite of what some rhetoricians, I will not say show that they believe, but sort of hint at (even among ourselves). Well then, friends, we must unify ourselves in our history: if we do not have memory of ourselves we do not even have and possible intelligence of the future. Do you imagine that the young or the mature Hitler was anyone more important than a passing Milosevic when, in the chaos (proportionalistic, if you allow me to say so) of the Weimar Republic, he suddenly became the head of government as the result of a series of incidents, just as happened in Belgrade? Excuse me, but this was a Germany without the Rhineland, without the Ruhr, a Germany without anything, a Germany destroyed by the contrasting imbecilities of the f

ar right and the far left both of which wanted a great Germany in the same way, the Spartacists on the one hand and the right-wing, ex-combatants on the other... who could have imagined it?

At this point, however, due to the logic of the military-industrial complex which then already dominated the world, in consideration of this candidate for re-launching the Ruhr's steel production and arms production in the world and in Europe, when he breaks the Warsaw pact and occupies, re-appropriates against an "abstract historical injustice... nobody breathes a word: "Very, very well, in this way a re-launching of the military-industrial complex, of steel production, of the great forces and the great Western and European capitalist families will probably succeed again". And so bully for the Rhineland (or bully for Kossovo). And after a while, the Sudetenland is okay too. A pity, but... prudence on the part of London and Paris: "After all, if we satiate this demon, if we let him take the Sudetenland too, if we show him tolerance, perhaps this will succeed in dampening his aggressivity".

Instead the Leviathan's reaction is quite the opposite: the more he eats, the hungrier he gets, the more he is obliged to devour. And so immediately afterwards we get the annexation of Austria, the Anschluss. Here too there are the triumphant masses. But when the entire world endorses the legitimacy of Hitler's career, why should we be astonished if the masses draw their consequences from this? And then we have - friends, what I must tell you is something that greatly defines me (otherwise send me on my way, it is no question of majority or minority), what does not at this moment cause me "anguish" but seems to me of a political clarity that is absolutely blinding - we then have the Spanish episode. We have a legal republic, very legal, nobody questions its legality. A general (who furthermore was in Morocco, it seems to me) decides to take power, first in the army and then... Officially, to save the situation (in the name of the people - as Cossiga (1) says - always "in the name of the people"). Well

then, at this point, in the face of this internal action, most clearly violent and anti-constitutional, we get Fascist Italy, officially, with the blessings of the cardinals (the documents for it exist), we have the Fascist troops leaving for Spain to aid the army - "Serbian" or "federal" of that time - the coup army, officially a coup army, we have the Nazi troops which, making a great noise and disseminating propaganda to all the world, go on parade, depart, embark on ships and even some aircraft, arrive there; and France... - Italy has a sea, Germany has no contact, but France is united with Spain by the Pyrenees, by the Basque country among others, which is between the two parts - the France of Leon Blum, still today the most sacred of the century's reformers, a humanist, a good man, an anti-Stalinist, and so on; the France of the Popular Front including the Communists, including all the French intelligentsia that counted, "les lendemains qui chantent", the great unity... That France, in the face of wha

t is happening in the neighbouring republic - with the military coup, the Nazi and Fascist troops already officially marshalled as in Ethiopia against the League of Nations, against law, that France proclaims its non-interference and limits itself, like the Americans, like everyone, to permitting individuals - Malraux and others - to go and join the slaughtered republican troops. But here I must put my foot down, friends, and I think of Dahrendorf, of Ralph Dahrendorf and a few of his analyses: certainly we have no longer any need of practising Socialism (2), but, alas!, it has taken too long; because the complicity of the Western ruling classes has allowed them to go ahead for twenty years longer (and we, along with Carlo Ripa di Meana and Ignazio Silone (3), were of this conviction back in the Fifties!). Well then, today we find the the historical heirs of Chamberlain on the political level. And then there is Munich. After Spain, after a Spain defeated, Ethiopia annexed, Albania which is about to be annexe

d, the Sudetenland, Austria, the Rhineland - after all this there is the meeting in Munich where Chamberlain and Daladier together sign and attest to the fact that Mussolini is the man who is saving the peace. I was eight years old, but for a thousand reasons I have incredibly strong memories of that week, as if I had experienced them as an eighty-year- and not an eight-year-old.

And look at what is happening now: we have allowed that occupation, which has truly reached Nazi proportions, by Milosevic and Serbia of a province - not of a people - that is independent according to the Constitution, the men and women of Albania. We have allowed a republican government to be headed by someone who no longer had the legal right: not due to any fault of his own, the ceasing of the federal parliament also took away Markovic's formal legal standing, but our - let me say - Eurocracy, in this Yugocracy, recognised him without realising he didn't have the necessary charisma. And therefore we have to add onto the bill the fact that for two years we have financed and supported, let us say, an administrative Belgrade while from the interior, in Croatia and Slovenia, they already saw that this was a superfluous accretion, a superstructure, without any future. Europe said no to letting Yugoslavia into the European Community, to its broadening as a federalist measure. Wrong, and we were here saying

Europe Now - as you will remember - because this was necessary for Europe and necessary for Yugoslavia. And when one speaks today of Dalmatia and the islands... I ran an election campaign a year and a half ago, saying: Let us reappropriate Dalmatia! But how? With joint-ventures: we have 2,000 islands, it is worth our while because we need money - we need everyone's humanity - so that Dalmatia will be European, with Croatian sovereignty, but in the sphere of the mutual reappropriation of peoples who had been united.

So please excuse me then, but we have the occupation - or the attempt at it - of Slovenia and Croatia. We have the official revolt against the President of the Republic..., against the Prime Minister who declares that the Minister of Defence is waging a coup and wants to throw him out. At the same time we have free elections, certainly not exemplary ones, but in Croatia and Slovenia and everywhere else we have seen the constitutional procedures respected as far as possible - because I think your independence movements respected all the constitutional mechanisms of the Yugoslavian Republic that were still practicable, because the others were not practicable just because of the Serbian act of ostracism.

If this Europe, if Lord Carrington keeps to the positions he has declared with understatement - which it is just Carlo and evidently not me who manages to deal with it - if we have, in fact, these beastly things that have been done, they take these aggressors and those they have attacked and put them on the same plane and then say to an aggressive army (which is the only real army involved) "if you don't stop this within ten days, we will see about it; if in ten days you have stopped, okay, otherwise we will impose sanctions"... but, excuse me, this is tantamount to telling that army "for nine days you can occupy all the territory you can, kill all those you can kill, and whatever you do or don't do, if you have occupied only a small portion instead of 95%, that's your problem, you're a jerk, we offered you the sacrificial victim on a tether". Like the Sudetenland, like the Spanish Republic, in the illusion that one will not then be invaded - France not, because there is the Maginot line (weak, because

the pacifists do not even want the Maginot, but this does not matter), and Churchill too who was heroic at the end, but who in the Thirties repeatedly said "if I were Italian, I would be a Fascist. I am a democrat, but...". This is Europe, and so if we accept in Kossovo what we have and are accepting - friends, this our responsibility, that of our parties, of our internationals - it is exactly what in we accepted with regard to concentration camps in '38 for Gypsies, Jews and homosexuals. Because there was news of what was going on (later, of course, the whole iceberg was discovered, but we knew). And so it is with Kossovo, where they cannot go to school... In short: our friends were able to come to Rome a month ago. All the Kossovo parties were there. Now they have not been able to get to Zagabria. This is what has happened in twenty days. We have not even managed to go to Athens and come here by way of Trieste.

We have been saying these things since April, May, June - so we have certainly not been impatient. We have been saying them to Andreotti, to De Michelis, to Delors, to Lord Carrington up to a short time ago. We have been saying them to everybody. The newspapers' editorial writers and special envoys, please note, took our part, even more, they were the ones who allowed us to mature. But then, as soon as these same newspapers have to report on the true political clash, there is on this issue, on the non-violent, let's call them, Radical and democratic actions, there is total silence. The editorial writers of »La Stampa , of »Corriere della Sera , etc., wrote: "No one is waging the just battles!". And then if someone should do so, they are totally ignored to avoid creating problems to the powerful whom they criticise since they have the monopoly on criticism. If this is the situation, then it is right to come out and say, friends, that my worry as a militant Radical was on the one hand to say "I presumably

would have gone to Spain in the Thirties to fight Italy, to fight my country, to fight on the side of the just". But then allow me who now feels himself to be in the same conditions: armed with non-violence and not that other kind, however I am ready to compete with the Ustachi, for example, which Europe on the contrary encourages by creating the premises for its historical justification. When they leave the Tudjimans and the Tomacs alone, they leave the democratic Slovenes alone, and so they justify the rage, the frustration and the fact that in this democracy today the main Croatian newspapers do nothing but write of war and no more of politics: because, by a comprehensible reflex, a baby with its throat cut... At the end, with the danger of forgetting that the Serbian soldiers too, for their part, are being coerced, are also victims, there is thus created the demon of the adversary which is consonant with the Fascist, racist vision of the life of the world. And on this note I will end.

Deliberately, when I began the campaign against extermination from hunger in the world, I asked the party to say that I had started it, that it way my business as a Radical militant, because non-violence cannot be transferred to everyone by passing a motion. But I must say that at this point I am ready to see among the conclusions of the Federal Council an eventual decision to request a collective non-violent action which therefore - let me say it for those who don't know - does not mean having the obligation to go on a hunger strike or to practice self-incrimination, but the party's readiness and obligation to serve eventual harder and more collective decisions for non-violent action aiming at fast results. Because the problem is what Carlo Ripa di Meana indicated a moment ago: today, finally, with Separovic and De Michelis, it has been made known that within two months in any case recognition will be given. The same method continues: "We give you two months". And so one says that whatever they do - th

ey can kill all the Croats or all the Serbs - for the moment no recognition will be given. But why, my friends? But why? This is the true problem: if in June we had recognised the democratic independence that had been established - and we say this as federalists, we anti-nationalists, we who are apparently the extremists of another position (and that is not true) - from the following day the intervention of the U.N. would have been legitimate, because there would have been the aggression of one state against another, and in Slavonia we would have found the proof of the financing and inciting of terrorist revolt against independent countries and so... Prudence demanded this, because at that moment the declaration of intent of the two republics - confederate on the one hand and Europe-oriented on the other - was perfectly clear. Hence, a Yugoslavian federation. That was the position to take: to recognise these republics would mean to recognise the confederation and to block the isolationist instincts which I

fear have affirmed themselves in Slovenia - but understandably, with, let us not hesitate to say it, a certain egoistic detachment (not to say cunning) on the part of the Slovenes in relation to the situation of Croatia and the other republics. It would be a good thing for us to speak plainly and not talk nonsense. At bottom, as long as no one is interfering with me - hands are kept off Capodistria, but not off Dubrovnik - the problems are serious, but we can work things out between ourselves... One must admit, this is part of the logic of the national parties, this is part of the logic of the choices made by our liberal and democratic Slovenian comrades who have immediately re-established their very strong little national parties, have connected themselves with the non-existent internationals (such as the liberal one, etc., at this time) and then they act like Radical-Nationalists or National-Democrats, which is a historic impossibility in today's situation.

To speak of these things, friends, does it not mean to begin trying to reflect on what Mamedov and others invited us to think about in order to avoid a blind and suicidal Eurocentric attitude? To think of the wars, the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, that involve populations of whom we know practically nothing? And we thank our comrades of the Azerbaijan Supreme Soviet who today are patiently working for the party. Patiently working: in effect, they have not yet reproved us - think of it, Roche, what sacrilege! - for their awful situation, for the fact that the party has not concerned itself, not even begun to concern itself with the problems of those republics.

And here we have some tremendous questions weighing upon us. But pardon me, do we really believe that a Europe is manageable composed of 70 rather than 40 states, each of which with 4%, or 5% or 6% of its income earmarked for national defence expenditures, for the army, subtracting at the very base 6% of the income from regions which are often poor because they have been oppressed, and having as well a diplomatic policy of their own, a currency of their own, an exclusive bank of their own, and a sovereignty of their own to administer? Let us add up the accounts. It is not by chance that among Germany, Japan and Austria, the three countries which the peace treaty imposed only very small military expenditures, Austria has avoided inflation and has had more... but Germany and Japan, thanks to 15 years of no expenses taken from the national product for the industrial-military complex, have achieved, because they knew how to manage it, the great economic miracle which has made them the two states which are o

n the way to taking first and second place in the life of the world for a certain period. These are things which we must quickly admit to ourselves. Whether it regards the Baltic Republics or the Ukraine, this large country which today regains its will, I would say, for manifesting itself. Here is the point of the debate among us, not during the course of the Federal Council meeting, but in the course of days. The Ukraine, the Ukrainian army, the expenditures for the Ukrainian army, Ukrainian diplomacy - all of this is right and necessary, it is inevitable unless we are ready to create that United States of Europe which means, on the principle of federalist subsidiary status, holding in one's own hands the plan for self-government of the territory as far as possible, and delegating the rest to the federal factor and structure - but which must be what it claims.

And here we come to another knotty problem, friends,. Why is the history of the Thirties repeating itself? Because, dear friends, we have a European Community - and we denounced it then with Spinelli, with Carlo, perhaps incredulous at having to see how right we were - an anti-Democratic Europe in which a Parliament elected, here with true freedom, by the peoples does not gain recognition for a single true parliamentary function. Perhaps you don't know it, distracted friends of Azerbaijan as you are, that this European Community which is the emblem (must be the emblem for all of us) of a democratic set-up against the authoritarian "federalisms" which we have all experienced - this Europe is more and more intent on denying for at least the next ten years - officially! - any power of decision to the European Parliament and which the fierce decline of Mitterand and the Quai d'Orsai even leads them today to be at the centre of an operation to adulterate the reality of the European Parliament and turn it int

o a single mechanism with the other twelve national parliaments. This is what the Socialist Party or Socialist spheres want. And the Socialist International? And the Liberal International? And the Christian Democratic International? And perhaps even the ecological international? What are they doing? Where are they? How are they preparing themselves? I have given some examples. At this point, if the ozone problem is real, if the hot-house effect is true - friends, this what we must really admit to ourselves - if the hot-house effect should cause the ocean to rise three meters or thirty centimetres and ten or fifteen or twenty islands should consequently be submerged as is foreseen, and there should be the problem of 200,000 - 300,000 people here and ten million people there, are you sure that we are not already living in a world where practising democracy above all will be the source of an invitation to militarise defence and civilian life in order to secure the salvation of the ecological system and save it

from the time-wasting of politics, windbags and democrats? Are you certain that in the face of the immigration caused by savage events, with which we will have to come to terms... Apart from the fact that this has always happened throughout history: it was the famine of the time that brought the Huns and the Mongols down with their unknown civilisations. The facts of life do not change at all. We have this fact of the invasion and now one fears the invasion of the poor Croats or the Slovenes and De Michelis and the Croatian minister had a meeting on this very subject: can Italy accommodate 30,000 or 80,000? And wait and see how all of this will adulterate the Italian political struggle!

And so then, I would like to conclude at this point with an observation that is very certain: what I have been talking about in somewhat autobiographical and personal terms is something, I think, that many, very many, the majority of people in the world know. Some of the hard things I have said seem to me to be quite incontrovertible: they are a matter of course, to the point that one is inured to them. I insist on this: the characteristic trait of our time is the split between knowledge and politics, the chasm that divides the consciousness of what is and would be necessary and the systematic capacity to bring it about. There is certainly no question of those who don't realise it being evil: they cannot, there is a structural factor that will not allow them to. But we, in a classic way, are convinced, I am convinced, that classical democracy, the most essential, the minimal kind, is really still to be tested out, because it has not been tested any more even in regard to dictators and dictatorships and

totalitarian temptations and illusions.

Well then, we have united to do this together. And so, if you will excuse me my friends, the true problem was stated by the Party's First Secretary, and I will try to say it in a different way: if a minute of the Federal Council's time costs us $60 and ten minutes costs $600, if this is true, and if our financial sources are primarily - and they must be - self-financing ones; if you think of how much it costs to keep the party going for one hour - a trans-national and austere kind of party trained more than others at being frugal... Let us add up the costs. Behind these little sheets (of the periodical »The New Party , ed.) - and I thank Alexandre again for having given me the consolation and the information which she did together with the others of the Mossoviet, etc.: contrary to what we thought and which at bottom I too feared, it seems to be of some use if I have correctly understood what you say - behind what we know to be these small, humble sheets sent out to 57,000 members of parliaments, there

are immense costs. There are tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars for each of these sheets. Why? Because the present human system is such that the shipping, the delivery and so on, costs four times as much as the paper and the printing and to produce it we had to create the team, a new structure, never before seen, of translation and of shipping, so that the membership fees (mostly Italian, but also others), the 500 lire a day, the not quite half dollar a day which is the scandal - in Italy - of what it costs to be a member of our Radical Party, goes like that - every minute - in shipping costs, in invisible things, etc. We are installing a fax - we use this, we were the first to use new technologies which help us to save because we were the poorest. Those like Mario Busdachin, like Olivier and others who are working for the creation of a polycentric situation of political initiative, really live, if you will excuse me, like actionists from the first decade of the century (not even

on the level of the Twenties and the Thirties). We have informed you of the things for which the $5 million have been earmarked which the Radical Party gets from its Italian members or public financing [of political parties, ed.]. The latter we have been and are using in this way for the first time. But look out - this is important, this is information which you must have: Italian law obliges one to spend the public financing funds on the party machinery and on the party's national activities. We, officially, and non-violently, disobey and transfer all this money, against the law, to trans-national activities, spending all of it on services and nothing on, let's say, party structures. This is also to be kept in mind.

But we have also informed you that these $5 million this year, for example, have had to take into consideration a decrease in members: the tenfold increase in party officials and several hundred fewer ordinary members. Now, we know that the tenfold multiplication of party officials, let us say of deputies and members of parliament, is an important basis and a way of obliging the mass media or the media to speak of the fact that it is possible to become a member of the Radical Party if the deputy or the minister are known to have joined [the Party]. So I am not excessively worried about the few hundred less members (300-400 in Italy) if we may be able to make them up at the latest by December. But the great problem we have to cope with, friends - and that is why we are giving you those budgets to be looked at for the first time on your way home, because I know very well that you will not have the chance to look at them here - the great problem is the one posed by the First Secretary and the Treasurer: we

, practically by January or March... I repeat to those of you who are condemned to listen to me on earphones: it is stated in the report that after having set aside $5 million (and left that fund untouched) for giving us all the possibility of creating together the trans-national and trans-party force we have already noted a decrease in our income. This means that if today there are 20 Soviet members of parliament enrolled in the Party, there is however a total of 100 - 200 fewer members than last year. In Hungary, it seems to me, we have half last year's number whereas in Czechoslovakia (and I am talking about the good situations) the membership situation is no different... In Romania the situation may be a little different, but I mean to say that we must take all this into account. So then, when within three months these $5 million - which will already be reduced to two and a half - will be used up, what are we going to do? You see, that is the thought the Secretary and Treasurer and all the rest of us are

tormented with. But perhaps there is a chance that at the next elections I will manage to put together a non-Radical ticket saying that however it will allow us to contribute a portion of public financing, and so I will make up a ticket for the trans-party and trans-national force - for getting elected, for not getting elected, for having that portion and it will be a small part... And then the other comrades, Adelaide and the others, will have to answer more and more to the needs of their national organisations and thus - making ever greater sacrifices - they will only be able to give less and less to the programme and of time and of energy-time and of energy-money... So that is the reason for the urgency when we tell ourselves that we know in all conscience that the Budapest mandate will not allow us to hold another Congress. Why? Because, certainly, a Congress should be held at a time when it is possible to establish - even if taking a reckless risk - that the centre of responsibility is being moved from

Moscow to Kiev. Because otherwise a Congress is illusory. A Congress is needed in where it is possible that not only the old guard of the old Radical Party are the ones to manage the proceedings of the transition. And if we today were to get up and go - sometimes I get an urge to follow, as it were, the programmes of our French friend - I am sure that within thirty days everything would be destroyed. We do not even have the wherewithal to convene the councils, let alone pay for the trips, the tickets and other things. The question is closed. All of this must be taken care of, and now it seems to me that if we were to hold the Congress in January, that is within 60 days - ask yourselves with intellectual honesty, but if possible with worry too - would it be possible for Sergio Stanzani, or Emma Bonino, or Marco Pannella, or Paolo Vigevano, or Marino Busdachin, or Olivier, or Paolo Pietrosanti, or.... (the names are few) to pass on the responsibility to others? Would it be possible within these 60 days to gi

ve you enough time - to you colleagues with your great political and human experience, to you deputies of your countries, of your territories, of your parties - to find someone ready and able in his objective requisites to take on the running or a part of the running of the party that requires working 24 hours a day with things apparently mortifying? Emma Bonino, who in her political activity - a member of the Chamber of Deputies, a member of the Speaker of the Chamber's staff - has always possessed certain traits, like Adelaide, of charisma, popular commitment, political strength, has since last year done the daily accounts of the addresses and the non-addresses; and Sergio and Paolo have done the printing costs, the deadlines that expire, have searched for Cyrillic characters, for making Agorà compatible... and the money that is lacking!...

Agorà has an enormous commercial potential: if we were to offer to Coca-Cola or the European Community, or to the military-industrial complexes 50,000 or 60,000 or 70,000 addresses of members of parliaments throughout the world - all computerised and up-to-date - this to my mind would have a great commercial value: it is a significant target, never before done, that no one can improvise. We have no time to turn all this into account. We do not have the way nor the time, nor do you. But really... Here we have four or five members enrolled in the last thirty days who represent Croatia. We have this mystery (for me) of Tomac who is here with us - and I say once again I know that in Rome I couldn't manage it if we were in a similar position - we have mature people 40, 50, 60 years old who come and say "I am joining". What is all this? Frivolity? And then you, Ivo Jelic from Dubrovnik, you know the Italian situation well, and no one has the longing to pass for Cicciolina's man or Radical nonsense, and so you

must have thought and thought again! And today Ivo Jelic is a solid and important reality, and in fact he is not trying to get into Dubrovnik but is here - for the sake of Dubrovnik and all of us, I imagine. So then, holding a Congress involves all of this. However, I must tell you too, that there is also a political reason for our wanting to do it, and we have prepared it (later, on Sunday, we will see). It is not possible, comrades, to work in an Italian situation where the far greater part of the old comrades, the prestigious and historical ones, are spreading the word that we are a dictatorship, that we are a quadrumvirate, that there is no democratic life in the party, that we do not allow those who might want to to work. It is not possible: every time after 20, 30, 40 days... And that there are capital errors in our political management... It is not possible. And if we all have a minimum of respect for ourselves, at this point, patience, we accept the responsibility of not respecting the substance of

the Budapest decisions, of not respecting the evidence...

There is someone who is saying that the party is dying and that we are bunglers. He says it to people who do not either laugh sarcastically or cry because it is the first time that they are listening to him, and he has been repeating it every three months for four years that the party is dead, that we are traitors, Fascists, that we are other things... Which is to say that you do not exist, none of you exist, nor of the new party members. You, Tomac, and the others do not exist, do not exist for him. How is that? Yes, yes, I am obviously referring to friend Roche, everyone has heard him. For heaven's sake. Before that was not the case, before I was referring to you, for example, (probably he is alluding to Bruno Zevi, ed.). Experiencing, that is to say false ideas in a false way: because the only thing certain is that this party has elected its officials along statutory lines, has changed the dates of its Congresses indeterminately and established that it is not necessary that the party must be dissol

ved if the Congress is not held. This is our task.

But let me tell you: a Congress costs at least a billion lire, at least a million dollars: it depends on where you hold it, but it is more likely to cost a million and a half (and if you want to know why, think of air fares, the daily expenses of one's sojourn, and primarily the cost of simultaneous interpretations, etc.) A part of this million and a half dollars will have to come from the two-million-dollar residue of the newspaper project which we must continue to send out. A Congress regarding which I ask myself if it is free to allow me to stop being President of the Federal Council... This is the serious, democratic, moral question. Will it be possible at that moment to allow Stanzani to be, for example, the director of the largest Italian television network or whatever else can be of use to us? Or for Emma Bonino to work in parliamentary, international, ecological politics at prestigious levels instead of being the enthusiast of what appears as rubbish? Is it possible that Paolo Vigevano can final

ly go and concern himself with Radical Radio? Which of you, if within 60 days we get to the Congress and we do not hold up as the Budapest Congress desired... or we do not meet and we close up shop,

or

otherwise it is necessary - and this possibility must exist - that we hold the Congress in Lithuania, in the Ukraine... Look for example at this missing Western Europe of practising democracy: it is absent from the battle as it was in that of the Spanish Republic against Franco, it is absent in Yugoslavia, it is even absent from us, from our inner sanctum. For those of good conscience... And so, we will certainly be called to make a concrete decision on this, but I beg of you, do not brush off the urgent necessity that has been placed upon you. I can understand that you may be feeling violated: you have only just joined this party and you are being asked to make a choice. Are we to hold this Congress in January? Most of all it is a chance, it is a way to get to know each other better, but we have told you the whys and wherefores... because for us it is also necessary to debate with comrades who manage, despite us and our depravity, to give the Radical Party the essence, or the essential part of their concret

e time, day after day.

There are extremely important comrades who say repeatedly, more and more insistently, that they cannot function, because they are not allowed to, because Stanzani doesn't allow them to, because others do not allow them to. But there are comrades to whom this seems to be allowed in spite of us - comrades, and always more of them, who manage to give their time to the Radical Party, and their money and their intelligence, even in Italy.

I beg you to excuse me, friends... I have certainly been talking a long time, but in all conscience I believe that there are urgent things to be talked about which I have not mentioned. Perhaps in this way you will better understand how the reports of Stanzani and Vigevano were really our reports, made for the purpose of creating the technical and material conditions that would allow you to choose as soon as possible, to take on the responsibility of a collective and individual choice. As far as my personal matter is concerned, that of the hunger strike, I am thinking about it. As you see, I am well, but I would not want any eventual decision of the party to go over to an articulate and precise political campaign, thus including its non-violent part, to be tainted even by the praiseworthy and fraternal motivation - above all - to join and share with me this supposed "suffering" in struggle which would be a problem, a disaster. I mean to say, there is a danger that my 26th, or 27th, or 28th day of non-v

iolent action (I don't know, I can't count them) will have created many problems for my comrades. They want to join up, but in great part, i think, to share with Marco, their comrade... this event, the experience of these days. Alas. Alas. It will be quite a different thing if serenely and for other reasons, the party can verify if from the day after tomorrow (or in five days to have time for preparations) in all the parliaments one of us will begin - and I mean exactly that: begin - for Yugoslavia, for Europe, a hunger strike, non-violent, for modest, possible and precise goals. That's the thing. And so, at this point perhaps, listening to the dozens or hundreds of requests of Italian comrades to join the action - but clearly within the framework of a non-violent and Gandhian, trans-national and trans-party action, and not in support of a comrade's action, of whom one is fond just as others are not fond. This is normal, but the dialectic then becomes one of bad charisma supported, to my mind, in a mistaken

way. But I think we will have to discuss this and come to a right decision in the coming hours and days.

This is the meaning of the question "Congress or no Congress?". And I hope that we will come back to talking about it after the central parenthesis of our council on Yugoslavian problems. But already now the four or five minutes duration of the next speeches will be able to utilise this supplementary data I have given. However, Emma is in charge of the Chairmanship and it is up to her. Thank you.

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