ABSTRACT: The Radical Party campaign for the abolition of the death penalty in the USSR, launched soon after the failed coup attempt in August 1991, immediately took on two characteristic features: its "parliamentary" side and its "world" side.

For all those who have joined this campaign, starting from Moscow, from the country that until recently was considered the "Evil Empire", has meant providing Washington and classic, consolidated democratic countries which still have the death penalty with an example of tolerance and juridical civility to measure up to.

(THE PARTY new - n. 6 - march 1992)

The political happenings in the ex-Soviet Union, particularly Gorbachev's resignation and the uncertain birth of the Commonwealth of Independent States, oblige us to look back over some of the stages of the campaign described in the fourth edition of this newspaper. We have presented Mr Yeltsin with a request for a meeting in order to hand over the signatures of those who have put their names to the manifesto-appeal. In the meantime, the next step is at the Radical Party Congress on May 1, where the "World parliamentary campaign for the prohibition of the death penalty in the world before the year 2000" will be debated and organized.

Members of parliament who have signed the manifesto-appeal (more than 600 of them as of March 1, 1992) come from the following places:

Africa, including Lamizana Sangoulè, former president of Burkina Faso; Austria; Belgium, including the vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies, Jean Mottard, and Elie Deworme, a minister; Canada; Croatia, including Zdravko Tomac, deputy prime minister and minister Vladimir Veselica, both members of the RP Federal Council, Ivica Percan, vice-president of parliament; Czechoslovakia, including Jozef Miklosko, Czechoslovakian deputy prime minister, president of the Czech parliament, Dagmar Buresova, and President Havel has informed us that he is highly sympathetic to the initiative, but as head of state he may not express such an opinion via a petition; Denmark; England; the European parliament; Finland; France, including Michel Dreyfus-Schmidt, vice-president of the senate; Germany, including Gregor Gysi, secretary of the PDS; Hungary, including Rezso Nyers, several times a minister, minister Ferenc Jozsef Nagy, while the president of the republic, Arpad Goncz, has expressed his support without signing up, in

consequence of his position; Greece; Holland; Ireland, including Garrett Fitzgerald, former prime minister, and ministers Desmond O'Malley and Robert Molloy; Israel; Italy, including Flaminio Piccoli, chairman of the foreign commission and former chairman of the Christian Democrat International; Latvia, with the foreign minister Janis Jurkans and the government representative to Moscow, Janis Petris; Malta, including minister Ugo Mifsud Bonnici; Norway; Poland; Romania, including senate vice-presidents Karoly Kiraly and Vasile Mois and the environment minister Marcian Bleahu; Slovenia, including Zoran Thaler, deputy foreign minister, member of the RP Federal Council; the ex-Soviet Union, including Yuri Afanasev, member of the dissolved supreme soviet; Sweden; Switzerland; the United States, including Mario Cuomo, governor of the state of New York.

Well-known people who have signed the appeal (roughly 200 throughout the world) include: Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Coretta Scott King; Nobel prize winners Abdus Salam, Elie Wiesel and Mairead Corrigan Maguire; Elena Bonner-Sacharova; Antonino Zichichi and Marcello Mastroianni; François Fejtö and Henri Laborit; Clark Ramsey, former Attorney General in the Kennedy administration; Nick Harman, columnist for "The Economist".