ABSTRACT: In the interview, published by the Croatian daily newspaper "Slobodna Dalmacija", Marco Pannella outlines the Radical Party's positions on the situation in former Yugoslavia, and the ongoing initiatives for the recognition of the republics of Croatia and Slovenia.

("Slobodna Dalmacija", 30 November 1991)

Rendezvous in Maastricht! The Italian Radical Party is organizing an expedition open to all those who want to protest in Maastricht on 9 and 10 December and the following day in Strasbourg in front of the European parliament, for the non recognition of Croatia and Slovenia.

M.P.: We will travel by train, and other militants coming from Germany, France and other European countries will join the Italian group. Croats, friends of the Croats, obviously friends of peace, will arrive in The Netherlands where a meeting of the heads of State and government of 12 E.C. countries is scheduled to take place, to ask Europe, for the umpteenth time, to recognize the will and the wish of the Croatian people to live in an independent State. Yesterday, at the European parliament, the Italian foreign minister, Gianni De Michelis, announced that the European Community will recognize the sovereignty and independence of Croatia and Slovenia by December 18 at the latest.

S.T.: We are talking about the positions and missions of the transnational Party exclusively for "Slobodna Dalmacija" with the leader Marco Pannella.

M.P.: Not one T.V. station, not even the CNN aired an event in Belgrade which strongly recalled the events of 1936. The troops which first destroyed Vukovar then returned triumphantly to Belgrade. The streets were filled with people who celebrated their return, and Milosevic greeted them with a palm leaf. It was like a celebration of triumph. The same thing happened in Spain when Franco received his soldiers. They are the same images, only the ones in Spain were black and white, and the pictures of Belgrade are in colour. What we have here is the repetition of the years in which Europe and the world remained motionless in the face of the rise of fascism. Today the United Nations are behaving like the Society of Nations in the past.

S.T.: Why does the world behave so passively faced to this new type of fascism?

M.P.: Because Yugoslavia has a $17 billion debt, which must be paid. The former bank clerk Milosevic seems to be in good relations with Kissinger. The major world bankers want to save this money which is in former Yugoslavia. The Europe of democracy and freedom has been passive seven months now, and in practice supports a putschist and Francoist army.

De Michelis and the other lords of diplomacy are behaving exactly like their counterparts in 1935.

S.T.: You have been fasting for 15 days, and are protesting in this way against the war and for the recognition of the two republics. How effective is fasting?

M.P.: The nonviolent individual should not be mistaken with the pacifist individual. Gandhi was nonviolent, not a pacifist. I believe the Yugoslav situation is identical to the Spanish one in the thirties. I belong to the Gandhian political tradition of justice and freedom. I am armed with nonviolence. I fight by fasting, just as I would fight with a machine gun if I lived in Vukovar.

S.T.: What do you think of the thesis according to which the Serbs were threatened in Croatia, and that this is the reason for the war?

M.P.: According to the available information (and not just papers, given that an ideological war presumes a war of information) and talking to a Serbian member of the Radical Party living in Slavonia, seven months ago there was no danger for the other ethnic groups that lived on Croatian territory. Now that there are tanks and massacres I couldn't tell...But I have to say the Croatian government has shown great tolerance by not asking the mobilization of the Serbs in Croatia.

In this situation, the problem is that Serbia cannot be recognized as a State because of Kosovo, that is, because of the things the Serbian government did, depriving the Albanians of independence. As a member of the European Parliament I will never allow the European parliament to recognize Serbia as a State because of its behaviour vis-à-vis the minorities of this republic.

S.T.: The European Parliament recently failed to pass the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia despite the fact that it had the possibility to do so.

M.P.: The situation at the European parliament now is changing, it is very different compared to the past. We are going to Maastricht to protest against the positions that do not want the recognition of the democratically organized populations - Pannella said during the interview with "Slobodna Dalmacija".