37· Congress of the Radical Party

Rome, 7/9 April 1995

Report to Congress

(14 January 1995)

Part one

- Historical introduction

- Campaigns

- The Party in the World

- Appendices

- Notes

Part two

Reform of the Maastricht Treaty, new organization of Europe:

the challenges for the Radical Party

drafted by Olivier Dupuis and Gianfranco Dell'Alba

Part three

ABSTRACT: The Emma Bonino's report at the 37^ Congress of the Radical Party includes three different chapters, with a short historical foreword about the Party's activities since the Budapest Congress (April 1989).

- Chapter One (the largest one) : "A) Battles and goals of the Sofia Motion"; "B) The Party in the World".

A) BATTLES AND GOALS OF THE SOFIA MOTION.

1- International Court for war crimes in former Yugoslavia; 2- International permanent penal Court; 3- Campaign for the revision of UN Conventions on drugs; 4- Campaign for the abolition of the death penalty; 5- Campaign for the International language; 6- Campaign against pandemics and AIDS spreading; 7- Campaign for an high authority in the Danube area (about any of these issues, a detailed chronicle of the Party's activities is presented, along with news on the current scenario and possible perspectives).

B) THE PARTY IN THE WORLD.

General picture of the Radical Party's worldwide diffusion, relationships with local mass-media and membership-related actions in the previous two years. A detailed analysis on each country's present scene follows: Central Europe (Albania, Austria, Bosnia-Erzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Turkey, Hungary, Vojvodina); Eastern Europe (Bielorussia, Moldavia); Russia; Ukraine; Baltic countries (Estonia, Lettonia, Lituania); Caucasus countries (Armenia, Azerbajan, Georgia); Euro-asian countries (Kazakistan, Tagikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan); EU countries, New York City, the UN, the US. Information about some specific campaigns (Save Tibet, etc.) are also given.

Chapter One ends with three appendices and some footnotes.

- Chapter Two: "Revision of the Maastricht Treaty, A new European disposition: which challenges for the Radical Party" (by Olivier Dupuis and Gianfranco Dell'Alba).

It is divided into several paragraphs: Enlargment of the European Union and prompt adhesion of Bosnia; European Constitutional Court; Singleness of decisional procedures and institutions; A president for Europe; Uniformity of EP election systems; Linguistic democracy; How to go ahead to1996?

- Chapter Three. This chapter, read at the Congress' opening by Luca Frassineti, Party's coordinator since January 15, offers the first political evaluations about possible results of the Congress itself, advancing and recommending the solution of an extraordinary "commissioners group", due to the Party's managing and financial difficulties. The document also pushes for the involvement of new energies, particularly non-Italian members of Parliaments, in order to start the process toward a new, broader Party chair committee. Then a comprehensive perspective about current European questions is introduced, pointing out the importance (both for the Party and in general) of closely watching their development. Finally, the paper focuses on the Party's perspectives and possibilities in the US.

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Part one

Introduction

The transnational and transdivisional Radical Party has been formed and developed by means of trial and error and experiment, which has involved both its structure and organizational forms - including the statute - and the content and deadlines of its political action. Each step has been difficult, in the absence of precedents (apart from the first Socialist-Communist International, which is too far removed in time and in form, and the NGOs, which are not comparable even when they work excellently in their own spheres).

The aim of the Radical Party was to be the first "direct-membership international, open to all the citizens of the world". In short, it aimed to be a political body of an entirely new nature, unprecedented in our times. This was, and largely still is, an indication of a projectual nature, and therefore achievable only if translated into programmes and objectives, methods and instruments of operation, and, naturally, political action.

The Budapest Congress, in April 1989, identified the specific addressees of the party that was about to be constituted as "the governing classes and their most free and responsible exponents". This was accompanied by a proposal of method: it is necessary to ensure that "similar legislative texts are presented in as many parliaments as possible, on the same day, at the same time, in the same form and with the same contents", backed up if necessary, and wherever possible, by nonviolent Gandhian iniatiatives, carried out either by individuals or by large numbers of people. From 1990-91 onwards, the instruments required for political action were developed (written publications aimed above all at parliamentarians and the governing classes, and an attempt to set up embryonic party networks in a number of countries, especially in Central and Eastern Europe).

It was not easy - and this should be remembered - to transform a party which, since its first refoundation and reconstitution in 1964, had included a certain transnational and transdivisional vocation, into a party which would be (exclusively) aimed at giving concrete form to this explicitly-stated new dimension, and which, among other things, would no longer compete with national parties on their own ground, above all in elections: on this point considerable doubts and resistance within the party had to be overcome.

Accompanied by difficulties and uncertainties, which were exacerbated by the absolute inadequacy of means and resources with respect to the new project, the Budapest Congress decided to suspend the statute and the party organs and to entrust the running and the organization of the party to a quadrumvirate formed of the four highest statutory organs (the President of the Federal Council, the President of the Party, the Secretary and the Treasurer); a period also marked, for the first time in the history of the party, by an interruption in the annual convocation of the Congress. This exceptional situation (accompanied by an alternative hypothesis - the definitive disbandment of the party as a necessary consequence of the financial situation) lasted for almost four years, until the second session of the 36th Congress, held in Rome in February 1993.

It took two years, from April 1989 to May 1991, for the party to reorganize its structure and forms of organization, to reduce the deficit - at least for the time being - and to gather resources, both financial and human.

In July 1991, the party produced the first issue of "The New Party", a "transnational" newspaper published in 15 languages and sent to government members and parliamentarians in over a hundred countries, as well as to a network of activists working in the party offices that had been opened in Central and Eastern Europe. In the spring of 1992, three years after its last meeting, the Congress was convened at a time when there were over 7,500 members outside Italy, including 200 members of government and parliamentarians, from 40 different countries. There were only 2,500 Italian members, despite the fact that Italy, for obvious reasons, was the only "reserve" which could yield financial resources and (at least at that time) activists. Right from the start of the Congress, held in Rome from 30 April to 3 May, we realised that the lack of Italian members meant that the financial situation was still precarious and inadequate. We also realised that it was necessary to draft new statutory rules and to elect party o

rgans that would reflect its "transnational" nature. The Congress was adjourned with the decision to convene a second session, which was held in Rome in February 1993. The intervening months were used to draw up a new statute, taking into account the considerations made during the debates of the assemblies held in Central and Eastern Europe (in particular those held in Moscow and Kiev), and to identify what was described as the minimum and indispensable "technical condition" for the survival of the party. In Congress this condition was defined as at least 30,000 Italian members, an objective which many considered to be impossible. The "technical condition" was necessary, though not in itself sufficient, to allow the resumption of the "political" activity of the party. The second session of the Congress paved the way for the launch of the membership campaign. The debate, on the other hand, confirmed the correctness and the relevance of our political analyses with regard to the crises affecting all the regions

of the world, and further highlighted the urgent need to establish a political body capable, thanks to its transnational and transdivisional nature, of organizing initiatives and influencing important aspects of these crises - crises of justice and rights - through the weapon of Gandhian nonviolence and through the investment of all its financial and human resources.

In two weeks, partly thanks to the fortuitous coincidence of public expectation with respect to Marco Pannella's initiatives in Italy, there took place what came to be called the "Italian miracle": 38,000 people paid the membership fee, providing a total income of 13.8 billion lire ($9,200,000). This covered the deficit as it stood at the beginning of Congress (around 5 billion lire), and laid the foundation for the relaunch of political action.

In July 1993, at the meeting of the General Council held in Sofia, it was therefore possible to install and ratify the new organs, elected by the Congress but "suspended" and subordinated to the fulfilment of the "technical condition". The General Council (which was followed by the first Assembly of Parliamentarians), however, voted in favour of a number of slight modifications to the party's objectives. The final motion now pointed to the United Nations as the main interlocutor of the Radical Party, constituted around the motion: "In order to ensure that the message of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Agenda 21 and all the other policy documents approved at supranational level become political objectives to be pursued and achieved, it is necessary, immediately and with great determination, to organize initiatives capable of involving and mobilizing individuals and peoples." As the driving-force behind these initiatives, there is a need for "a political body or force which operates without trepid

ation at a transnational level".

A number of campaigns were chosen, considered to be of priority importance in the new phase because they would be able to attract "widespread and important support, also at popular level, and to set into motion powerful initiatives and nonviolent Gandhian political struggles". The interlocutor of all these campaigns, as we have said, was the United Nations: and in reality, beyond the specific objectives (Tribunal, moratorium, revision of the conventions on drugs, etc.), it was already apparent that there was a greater and more ambitious objective: the beginning of a reform of the United Nations system, and the creation of new supranational and transnational law capable of regulating and directing relations between individuals and peoples.

Thanks partly to the contribution of a national party operating in Italy - the "Lista Pannella-Riformatori" - a number of exceptional results have been obtained on the "intermediate" objectives set in Sofia: the Resolution with which the General Assembly of the United Nations laid the basis for the creation of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity (which follows and reinforces the previous success represented by the creation by the Security Council of the United Nations of the ad hoc Tribunal on the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia) and the bitter conflict which developed for the first time in the United Nations on the abolition of the death penalty in the world: these are the most important and conspicuous results, as they no longer belong only to us, but to all those who wish to share them, support them and help to develop them.

With regard to the other objectives set out in the Sofia motion, the Party has managed to lay solid foundations (in particular on the anti-prohibitionist campaign on drugs) which, providing we are able to gather sufficient financial and human resources, will allow further significant developments at the level of parliaments, the European and international institutions, and public opinion.

What follows is a more detailed look at each of the various campaigns.

Campaigns

A. The objectives of the Sofia motion

1. THE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL ON THE WAR CRIMES AND THE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY COMMITTED IN THE TERRITORY OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA FROM 1 JANUARY 1991

Resolutions no. 808 of 22 February 1993 and no. 827 of 25 May 1993 of the Security Council of the United Nations gave the formal go-ahead to the project for the institution of an "ad hoc" Tribunal for the crimes committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. The implementation of the resolutions, however, soon ran aground as a result of hesitation, conflict, and attempts to divert, if not bury, the project. In May 1993 we presented Ibrahima Fall, the Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Human Rights in progress in Vienna, with over 50,000 signatures gathered in around 40 countries on an appeal for the immediate, and no longer merely formal, constitution of the Tribunal. However, our first initiatives to urge the United Nations to institute what we defined as "the first segment of international law" began in 1992.

In many parliaments, in particular in Croatia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, and the European Parliament, documents urging the United Nations to institute the Tribunal were presented thanks to our presence.

The first point of the motion approved in Sofia by the General Council, in July 1993, invited the Radical Party to obtain "the respect of the commitments and the deadlines for the constitution, in the manner and in the forms established by the United Nations, of the international Tribunal on the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, with particular attention to crimes related to ethnic cleansing and the genocide in progress". At that time, the General Assembly of the UN had still not proceeded to the appointment of the eleven magistrates and the Public Prosecutor. We organized initiatives in each country, and in many parliaments, to ensure that the Secretary General and the General Assembly undertook these duties and allowed the new jurisdictional organ to begin operation.

Finally, in September, the eleven magistrates were elected by the General Assembly, while the Public Prosecutor, the Venezuelan Ramon Escovar Salom, was appointed by the Security Council at the end of October.

In November 1993, in New York, at the head of a delegation formed, among others, by parliamentarians from Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro, and by Makram Ebeid, President of Parliamentarians for Global Action, Arieh Neier, President of the Open Society Fund and Vincent McGee, former President of the Amnesty International in America, I met the Secretary General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros Ghali, and handed him the 25,000 signatures gathered all over the world on a second appeal for the constitution of the Tribunal. The Secretary General informed us of his decision to set the formal institution of the Tribunal for 17 November in the Hague. Another step forward had been taken.

On the eve of this date, we organized press conferences in 13 countries (Albania, Burkina Faso, Croatia, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine and Voivodina, and in the European Parliament) with the organizers and the signees of the appeals. We knew that many problems still remained, and that these would be used as an alibi to prevent for as long as possible the commencement of the work of the Tribunal. One problem that was particularly difficult to solve regarded funding: to cover the cost of the staff of the Public Prosecutor (372 people), the eleven magistrates, the seat of the court, the protection of witnesses, investigations, and the detention of the accused before, during and after trial, in other words to ensure that the court could function properly, a budget of $35 million was required. To cover this expense in a stable and continuous manner, it had to be included in the ordinary budget of the United Nations, a decision which many countries opposed.

We undertook a range of initiatives. In February 1994 the Italian Chamber of Deputies approved an emendment, presented by myself and other deputies, to the decree-law containing provisions for co-operation with the international Tribunal: the emendment stated that Italy would contribute 3 billion lire in 1994 for the work of the Tribunal. Still in February, I promoted an appeal entitled "There is no peace without justice" for an international nonviolent campaign addressed to the United Nations: I was appealing to "all free consciences, with full respect for all beliefs, religions, and civil and political positions, to give their support and press for the effective institution of the ad hoc Tribunal". The appeal called on the V Commission of the UN General Assembly to include the running costs of the ad hoc Tribunal as an integral part of the ordinary budget of the United Nations, and also called on the Security Council to proceed to the immediate appointment of the new Public Prosecutor after the resignation

of Escovar Salom.

At the beginning of March, the President of the General Council of the Radical Party, Olivier Dupuis, began a hunger strike which was to last over a month, with the aim of obtaining a decision on the question of funding from the V Commission of the UN General Assembly. Around 300 citizens of 21 countries, including 20 parliamentarians, joined Olivier Dupuis in his action. Support began to grow, and thousands of faxes and telegrams were sent to New York. The President of the V Commission, Ambassador Hadid, later thanked the party warmly for the support given to the Tribunal and the United Nations.

On 6 April, the Commission approved the budget, which contained provisions that would allow the Tribunal to begin effective operations. There remained the problem of the appointment of the Public Prosecutor. On 7 June 1994, the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and the leader of the "Club Pannella-Riformatori", Marco Pannella, reached a political agreement which included a specific reference to this issue: the Italian government undertook to strive "with all its energy", in the relevant political and diplomatic seats, to bring about the appointment. We took the opportunity provided by the G7 summit in Naples, at the beginning of July, to press for an agreement allowing Boutros Ghali to put forward a strong candidate for ratification by the Security Council. On 11 July, the Security Council appointed Richard J. Goldstone, a Supreme Court judge who had conducted inquiries into the violation of human rights in South Africa. On this occasion, the President of the ad hoc Tribunal Antonio Cassese thanked

the Radical Party and myself for our "generous support and timely initiatives".

PROBLEMS REMAINING

The ad hoc Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia is the first segment of a new international jurisdiction, inconceivable until very recently. Too many incorrect statements have been made about the court: in particular, in order to denigrate the work of the court, it has been compared to the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals, which were established unilaterally by the victorious powers to punish the defeated enemy. The comparison is inappropriate and misleading. The ad hoc Tribunal on the former Yugoslvia is the first genuinely international Criminal Court in contemporary history, created on the decision of the UN Security Council, an organ with supranational powers that has real coercive force with regard to its decisions.

The fact that we have contributed to the creation of the court and the commencement of its proceedings does not mean that we can sit back. There is a considerable risk that the court will be made to run aground, intentionally, on the sandbanks of impotence or hesitancy. The Radical Party must therefore work with the same commitment as before, if not more, to watch over and support the court in every possible way.

One necessary objective could be a powerful campaign for funding. We will have to convince international public opinion that the Tribunal (which will also try the crimes committed in Rwanda, as decided by the recent vote by the Security Council) must have adequate funds to plan and carry out its activity in the most effective way.

A second initiative should be aimed at developing a possibility provided for by the Statute of the Tribunal itself: that is, the right to representation and legal examination of evidence by third parties. It would be possible, for example, to promote a campaign for the gathering of evidence against those with political responsibility for the genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of human rights committed in the former Yugoslavia: against those members of government or party politicians, to put it clearly, who appear in the limelight as leading figures in the so-called "peace negotiations" while for more than four years they have turned the territory of the former Yugoslavia into a theatre of savage crimes.

Finally, it would be useful, perhaps on the occasion of the first trials, to make international public opinion aware of what the Tribunal is doing in the interests of peace and justice. One possibility would be to organize an international Conference on the activity of the court, to be held in the Hague.

2. THE PERMANENT INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT ON CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Having received a mandate from the Italian government to represent it at the United Nations on the question on the institution of the permanent international Criminal Court on crimes against humanity, I spoke on 23 October of last year in the VI Commission of the General Assembly. I concluded my speech by inviting the Assembly "to decide in this session - as the UN prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its foundation - for the convocation in 1995 of the Conference for the constitution of the Court, entrusting the solution of the problems remaining after decades of juridical studies to the Preparatory Committees. This seems to us to be a necessary and appropriate response to all those, both states and citizens, who consider justice and law to be the foundation of international co-existence."

We had already conducted a campaign in 1993 on the objective of the convocation for next year of the Conference, involving parliamentarians and citizens from dozens of countries. In 1994, we drew up two motions, signed by hundreds of European mayors, leading international figures and parliamentarians from 30 countries, calling on governments to take institutional and diplomatic action to ensure that the 49th session of the General Assembly "solves the political questions still remaining with the aim of instituting the International Criminal Court". In May and June, and then again from September onwards, we distributed these motions to many parliaments, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, and in the European Parliament, where Radical deputies promoted the adoption of no fewer than five resolutions on the issue.

Among the specific initiatives, there was the Easter March in April 1994, organized by The Radical Party and "Hands Off Cain". The objectives of the march were a universal moratorium on executions, and the immediate creation of the International Criminal Court. European mayors, scores of parliamentarians, and thousands of citizens braved a violent downpour to take part in the march, which was opened by the mayor of Sarajevo at the time, Muhamed Kresevljakovic, a member of the Radical Party.

In the following weeks we kept a close eye on the proceedings of the meeting of the International Law Commission in Geneva, which was charged with drawing up the draft statute of the court. We wanted to make sure that the draft statute contained a provision excluding the death penalty, and that the Law Commission delivered the document to the VI Commission of the United Nations: in order to ascertain the progress of the draft, we twice met the members of this important organ, which has the task of drawing up documents relating to the development and codification of international law to be submitted to the Assembly.

We have already mentioned the agreement reached in Italy between the Prime Minister of the time, Silvio Berlusconi, and Marco Pannella's Riformatori. In the document, the Italian government undertook to press for the statute of the court to be approved during the course of the forthcoming 49th session of the General Assembly, and for the Conference of Constitution to be convened immediately; it also undertook to appoint me to express the Italian position on the issue to the UN Assembly. I was therefore able, at the end of September 1994, to follow for two months the proceedings of the VI Commission (the Law Commission), which had received the draft statute from the International Law Commission in July. In New York I was greatly helped by the mobilization we had managed to organize in many parliaments, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, while in Italy there was the launch of the "New York, New York" fund-raising campaign, which would subsequently allow the publication of two pages in the New York Times

in November and December (after the two pages in September). These full-page insertions aimed above all to provide the 184 missions present at the United Nations, as well as the American public, with food for thought on the issues of the suspension of executions and the International Criminal Court: issues which are delicate and controversial, but which are not closely followed, partly because the public is informed about them in a partial and distorted manner.

The start of the debate in the General Assembly was very positive, thanks in particular to the speeches by the delegates from Italy, Eire, France, Belgium, Croatia, Holland, and Germany, which spoke on behalf of the European Union following the adoption by the European Parliament of a document presented by the European Radical Alliance. Then came the icy stance taken by the American government, which defined the institution of the Criminal Court as "premature", and proposed that the decision be postponed for one year. A similar position was taken by other countries, including Great Britain and Japan. We were faced, in a conflict that was bitter and not easy to mediate, given the principles and the political implications at stake, with an opposition of the highest level. On several occasions we feared that the battle was lost, and lost for good. There can be no doubt that Resolution 49/53 of 9 December 1994, which established the beginning of the process leading to the convocation of the diplomatic Conference

for the approval of the statute of a permanent International Criminal Court, was an arduous political compromise between the advocates of a Conference in the near future (Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Russian Federation, the Scandinavian countries, etc.) and the supporters of a postponement, subject also to further development of the document drawn up by the International Law Commission (above all the United States, Great Britain and Japan), which seemed very much like a fairly clear attempt to bury the project for good.

As far as we are concerned, considering the objective difficulties of the project, the terrible opposition encountered, and the importance of the debate taking place, for the first time, in the General Assembly, the final adoption of the document (which took place by consensus, that is by means of a procedural strategy that avoided a vote which would make clear the various, and sometimes embarrassing, positions to international public opinion) can be considered not only satisfactory but extremely positive: it is the starting point, as unhoped-for as it is now fundamental, for us and not only for us, of every other initiative or campaign at international level. Why? Because, perhaps for the first time, we have seen a demonstration of the importance and decisiveness of a conflict that takes place at institutional level and is not limited, as too often happens in the campaigns promoted from time to time, also in the United States, in defence of one case or another that is judged to be dramatic and cruel, withou

t a global vision, a wide projectual character based on the priciples of the right to life and the life of rights.

A few hours before the end of this great campaign, on 23 November, I met Boutros Ghali during an official ceremony in Rome and handed him the thousands of signatures gathered all over the world in favour of the institution of the court: "The constitution of a direct relationship between international public opinion and the United Nations Organization," commented the Secretary General as he thanked the promoters of the initiative, "is a revolutionary development." We consider this acknowledgement to be one of the most significant results of our battle. Still on this issue, another point I would like to underline, due to the implications it may have in the future, is the resolution on the institution of the court presented by deputies from the "Lista Pannella" and other parties and approved by the European Parliament in November.

The motion approved by the UN Assembly is of great interest, and can lead to positive developments: a) it "welcomes" the report by the International Law Commission and its recommendations (including the convocation of the diplomatic Conference); b) the examination of the material and administrative questions raised by the draft statute is entrusted, without further delay, to the ad hoc Committee, which will also be charged with deciding on the procedures for the convocation of the project; c) after the first session planned for 3-13 April (following the 15 March deadline by which member States have to present their opinion on the draft statute), the same committee will if necessary hold another session in August; d) section 6 of the Resolution provides for the inclusion in the provisional agenda of the 50th session of the General Assembly of the question of the "establishment of an International Criminal Court", and states that the General Assembly must come to a decision on the date and the duration of the

diplomatic Conference: thus there already seems to be the possibility of a further session during the Autumn 1995 General Assembly, which would allow decisive progress towards the convocation of the Conference.

It is worth remembering, at this point, that the resolution also contains a precise reference to the offer by the Italian government to host the Conference in Italy. A choice which would allow us to follow its proceedings more easily.

In short, there is every reason to believe that the initiative will take great steps forward during the course of this year. A lot will depend on the proceedings of the ad hoc Committee: proceedings which will be particularly difficult, and which we will have to watch over. As further proof of the complexity of the task, we need only consider the reluctance shown by the countries of Africa and Asia towards the institution of the Court, a fact which is of no little importance. We will have to take courage from the positive vote of a substantial number of governments, and above all from the growing support among international public opinion for the idea to create a permanent international criminal court.

Some states have formulated doubts and reservations about the "feasibility" of the court. They have appealed to the sovereignty of states, pointed to the delicate nature of the relationship between international law and national law and on the existence of the principle "try or extradite", which makes it possible to try the accused wherever they are or wherever they have been arrested, or in the country in which they ought to be tried due to the relation between the crime committed and that juridical framework.

On the various issues regarding the creation of the court, it will be important to increase consensus in order to overcome technical and juridical objections and difficulties: for it to be legitimate to resort to the court, which countries have to give their consent for the court to have jurisdiction over a given crime and the alleged criminal; which law must be applicable, what relation will there be between the Court and the Security Council, what is the best way to define procedures relating to possible compensation, etc. All these questions must remain problems to be solved, not alibis to bring the project to a halt.

Finally, it is worth recalling that, on the initiative of the Radical deputies in the European Parliament, a specific item has been included in the 1995 EU budget for the funding, up to over 500 billion lire, of NGOs which "work for the establishment of international criminal law" and which "intend to contribute to the organization of international conferences on the subject in 1995".

POSSIBLE INITIATIVES

The resolution of 9 December sets out a process which must be followed with great attention.

The first date to bear in mind is 15 March of this year. By this date, member states must present their opinions. We will keep check, and thus be able to publicize at all levels the various positions with regard to the institution of the court, so that any negative opinions can be subject to examination by public opinion in the country concerned and around the world. To this end, the role played by parliamentarian members of the Radical Party within their parliaments, and with respect to their governments, will be important.

The second deadline is the first meeting of the ad hoc Committee, from 3 to 13 April. We can ask to be admitted to the proceedings as observers (in this we will be helped by our status as an NGO and member of the ECOSOC, which we hope will have been recognized). It is important that as many countries as possible take part in the proceedings of the Committee, which means it is necessary to begin immediately to ensure that this happens: one effective strategy may be an appeal addressed to the citizens and parliamentarians of democratic countries calling for the rapid examination by the ad hoc Committee of the problems that still remain; the petition could be handed to the Secretary General of the United Nations at the beginning of April. And I am not forgetting the prospect that the party will be able to promote the Easter March, once it has managed to overcome the current problems, aimed once again at the institution of the Criminal Court and the call to abolish the death penalty. If the party is not able to

do this, then we should call for the initiative to be promoted by other organizations or forces.

On all these occasions, I hope the international community will be able to make itself visible and show that, despite its frequent inability to act in unison in international crises, it at least has consideration and a united conscience with respect to human dignity, without connivance and complicity with the perpetrators of the most serious crimes committed against it, wherever in the world they take place.

We are aware, however, that the battle for the creation of the International Criminal Court will be won above all in the United States, which still has decisive influence on the decisions of the United Nations. "There is no peace without justice", the committee of parliamentarians and citizens, has just begun to establish close contact and collaboration with other international organizations such as the World Federalist Association, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, the Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, the International League for Human Rights, the International Human Rights Group, the Féderation Internationale des Droits de l'Homme, the International Bar Association Committee for Human Rights and a Just Role of Law, the Human Rights Watch, the American Bar Association's Task Force on the Proposed Protocols of Evidence and Procedure for Future War Crimes Tribunals, and Amnesty International. Such collaboration should be encouraged and reinforced.

If we have the financial and human strength and capacity to set up a major conference, in close collaboration with these organizations, on the reform of the United Nations system and a new international jurisdiction, it would mean providing the 50th anniversary session of the General Assembly with the political opportunity to deliberate in keeping with the proposals contained in the provisional agenda, which I mentioned above. I feel confident in saying that it would be a great objective to organize such a conference immediately before, or at the same time as, the opening of the 50th session of the General Assembly. To organize it effectively, however, will require hundreds of thousands of dollars, which will largely have to be provided by other forces, above all in America.

We are well aware that there are still technical and juridical problems, but we are most of all aware that if public opinion were well informed, it would not accept further postponement, and that the time is ripe for the international community, with full respect for institutional procedures and the need for considered reflection, to show that it wishes to proceed rapidly and with guaranteed rules on the path to a peace founded on law and justice.

3. THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE REVISION OF THE UN CONVENTIONS ON DRUGS

The second half of the 1980s saw the birth of what is defined as the "movement for harm reduction". Encouraged by the alternative experiments carried out in a number of European cities (Hamburg, Zurich, Frankfurt and Amsterdam), the promoters decided to join forces to exchange and reinforce ideas, and ideally to extend them to other cities, not necessarily only in Europe. The Radical Party and Co.R.A., in conjunction with the I.A.L, can safely claim to have played a decisive role in this development by organizing the 3rd Confernce of cities that have endorsed the Frankfurt Resolution, in Bologna on 10 October 1992, and then by helping to organize and taking part in the Conference of the Drug Policy Foundation which was held in Washington from 12 to 14 November 1993. Having started out as a series of local experiments, the policy of harm reduction is thus becoming the official policy of an increasing number of European countries. This must inevitably lead us to reflect more deeply about the reformatory charac

ter of the harm reduction policy and its capacity to contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the campaign for the legalization of all drugs.

We cannot fail to be pleased that the objectives we have been pursuing for years are being realised. At the same time, however, we must remain clear-headed and bear in mind that our final aim is still the legalization of all drugs, at worldwide level. Harm reduction is not an end in itself, but a means towards the objective of legalization. And we must also bear in mind the risk that the spread of harm reduction may become a form of protection for prohibitionism, a sort of counter-reform.

Having seen the end of the so-called "war on drugs" of the 1980s, we are now witnessing a "softening" of prohibitionism as a last attempt to prolong the policy, which has shown itself to be ever more fleeting and ineffective. We must be aware of the insidious danger, and prepare to take the necessary steps towards our objective, which means leaving behind the prohibitionist system in favour of a policy founded on legality and the correspondence between science and politics.

This is the reason why the Radical Party, in collaboration with Co.R.A. and the International Anti-prohibitionist League, has set up a campaign for the modification of the United Nations Conventions on drugs (the Single Convention of 1961 and the Vienna Convention of 1988). We have studied the various means of achieving this aim. In particular, thanks to the international conference jointly organized by the Radical Party, Co.R.A. and the I.A.L., held in Rome in May 1994, we have been able to ascertain that if one or more countries present a certain number of emendments to the 1961 Convention, it is possible to bring about the convocation of a UN Conference whose agenda concerns the modification of the convention in an anti-prohibitionist direction. As far as the 1988 Convention is concerned, its provisions are so extreme that it would be impossible to emend: the only thing we can and must do is to attempt to reject it, or have it rejected, in its entirety.

The anti-prohibitionist campaign, however, has reached a crucial stage. We can safely state that everything has been said. The roots and the values of anti-prohibitionism are based on solid foundations of knowledge and awareness. The inadequate and harmful nature of prohibitionism, in all its forms (from its most extreme form, the war on drugs, to its milder forms) and in all its aspects (health, economic, legal, and security matters, etc.), has been widely demonstrated. Until very recently it was still possible to claim that international statistical research on the results and the efficacy of the various policies implemented around the world had not been carried out, and that it was therefore impossible to evaluate their impact on the phenomenon. Having asked all the various international anti-drugs agencies whose task it should be to carry out such research, and having received no response, the Radical Party, together with Co.R.A. and the I.A.L., reached the conclusion that the only solution was to do it

ourselves. With the publication in June 1994 of the first international report on the results of the drugs policies implemented around the world, we managed, despite having far fewer resources than the international agencies established for the purpose, to fill the gap in research and demonstrate, in a rigorously scientific manner, the failure of the prohibitionist approach and the superiority of policies based on a tolerant and pragmatic vision.

The knowledge we have of the alternatives to prohibitionism is also more than sufficient. Thus the anti-prohibitionist battle, if it wishes to become more than just rhetoric, has no choice: it must move on to the next stage, the denouncement of the United Nations Conventions.

4. THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY. UNITED NATIONS MORATORIUM AND PROSPECTS

Our campaign for the abolition of the death penalty involves both parliamentarians and citizens. This characteristic distinguishes it from the campaigns conducted by other organizations, praiseworthy as they may be. Fortified by our long experience in the field of civil and human rights, we firmly believe that the battle for the abolition of state murder can only achieve its objectives if it is able to advance on two fronts: in parliaments, where laws are made, and in the squares and the streets, where citizens demonstrate their civil and nonviolent involvement. In one year of activity, the Radical Party and the "Hands Off Cain" Association have offered a number of examples of the validity of this method. The organized commitment to uphold the principle that states cannot dispose of the lives of their citizens was formally backed by parliamentarians, jurists and citizens in December 1993, with the founding Congress of "Hands Off Cain", held at the European Parliament in Brussels. It was an ambitious, wide-re

aching project, which aimed not only at a single country but at the wider international sphere, beginning with the campaign to obtain a moratorium on executions.

In April of last year, on the occasion of the Easter March in Rome, parliamentarians and citizens led by the mayors of Rome and Sarajevo, and by the Caritas organization, addressed a grief-stricken appeal to the Pope inviting him to support the Permanent Criminal Court and the demand for a moratorium.

In June, when the American President Clinton came to Rome, we handed him one hundred motions drawn up by city, provincial and regional councils, all of them calling for the suspension of executions.

However, the field of battle and the principal interlocutor for our campaign was clearly the United Nations.

We therefore had to come up with a strategy which would enable us to arrive at the United Nations as early as the occasion of the September session of the General Assembly. In June, we presented a motion in both chambers of the Italian parliament calling on the government to make a formal request for a moratorium at the United Nations. Similar motions were presented in Belgium, Spain, Romania and Hungary. In Italy, however, we were already sure of support from members of all the parliamentary parties. The motion was thus approved on 5 August - by unanimous vote - both in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. It was now necessary to ensure that the Italian government would make a formal request for the inclusion of the issue on the agenda of the Assembly by the 20 August deadline. In order to make sure that this parliamentary commitment was maintained, we organized a petition addressed to the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. On 15 August, a national holiday in Italy, we collected the signatures of more th

an five hundred people, both tourists and people from Rome, and the same evening we sent the petition, in the form of a fax measuring 20 metres, to the Prime Minister. Three days later, together with representatives of the African community in Rome, we organized a walk-around outside Palazzo Chigi, the official residence of the Prime Minister, to press the government to make the request as soon as possible. Our pressure worked: the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs said that he accepted the parliamentary vote, and promised to present the resolution as soon as Italy became a member of the UN Security Council, an objective which the Minister and the government held as priority and which they did not want to put at risk. Our strategy had got off the ground. Then, at the end of September, we launched the "New York, New York" fund-raising campaign, with the aim of taking out a full-page insertion in the New York Times containing information on the two objectives we had established - the institution of the Inter

national Court and the moratorium on executions. The insertion was planned to be published to coincide with the start of the debate on the two issues.

Once again our plan worked: 857 parliamentarians, 210 mayors, 93 city councillors, 64 regional councillors and 62 provincial councillors, not only from Italy, gave their support, and the campaign raised over 280 million lire. Moreover, on 4 October the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approved a Resolution calling on the 32 member states "to eliminate the death penalty from their criminal and military codes". The rapporteur for the Resolution was the Swedish deputy Hans Franck, a member of "Hands Off Cain". On 5 October, the Italian Parliament cancelled the death penalty from the military criminal code, and on 23 November it ratified the second optional protocol to the International Treaty on civil and political rights, which provides for the abolition of the death penalty.

Meanwhile, the question of the moratorium was under consideration at the United Nations. With a vote that divided member states, the General Assembly approved the inclusion of the issue of the death penalty on the agenda. In support of the battle in the Assembly, which was clearly going to be heated, a delegation of parliamentarians, mayors and leading figures from the world of culture met Boutros Ghali on 23 November at the UN offices in Rome - as I mentioned above - to hand him the thousands of signatures collected all over the world. A fax measuring 14 metres was sent to the delegations of undecided countries, while parliamentarians and leading figures in many countries sent faxes to their respective missions at the UN. Messages were also sent to the White House via Agorà Telematica and Internet.

On 28 November, the Italian Resolution, signed by 43 countries, was deposited, and on 1 December the full-page insertion appeared in the New York Times.

On 7 December, with 36 votes for, 44 against, and 74 abstentions, the General Assembly of the United Nations rejected the Resolution. Once again it had been a bitter conflict, at the highest level. Never before had so many delegates been present and so many speeches made in a Commission of the UN Assembly. Before voting, many delegates asked their governments for further instructions on what position to take and how to vote. A number of countries which have abolished the death penalty themselves took the opposite side, which turned out to be decisive, because of considerations extraneous to the issue, such as balance of power, etc.

The most important moment was not the final vote, but the vote on an emendment presented by Singapore, which reiterated the inviolability and the absolute "sovereignty" of the national state, an inviolable sphere within which anything is permitted and even the great principles of the international community have no influence. A dangerous precedent, an unacceptable step backwards: distorted as it was after the emendment was passed, due to the reappearance of forms of isolationism that had never completely died out, the Italian resolution was not voted for even by those countries which had presented and supported it.

Singapore lent itself to be the spokesman of much stronger forces and isolationist pressures. For on this occasion it was not so much the supporters of the abolition of the death penalty who were defeated as internationalists and the United Nations, and ultimately the defenders of the principle that the legitimacy of states lies in their respect for a number of fundamental human rights, deriving from a universal and transnational consensus, established through decades of dialogue and confrontation at the various levels of the international community, of the United Nations itself.

However, even in numerical defeat it was a great success to have brought the UN, for the first time, to discuss the moratorium on executions, the great principle that even the state cannot dispose of the lives of its citizens, whether they be as guilty as Cain, and the "year 2000" deadline for the abolition of the gallows, the guillotine, and the electric chair. From all over the world, parliamentarians, well-known figures and ordinary citizens have made their voice heard within the walls of the UN, which despite being made of glass are still impregnable. By approving motions in public and officials seats, signing appeals, placing insertions in respected newspapers, recording messages and sending faxes, demonstrating in the streets, going on hunger strikes, and communicating with each other in a continuous, daily battle fought with energy and devotion, they have thrown open the doors of the United Nations. A truly "revolutionary event for the UN, as the Secretary General Boutros Ghali observed.

The moratorium on executions remains the intermediate political and juridical objective of the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty; to move towards it, we will have to overcome two difficult tests in 1995: the General Assembly from September to December, and the Security Council, which can decide on a moratorium restricted to the event of coups d'état, civil war, and similar emergencies, whose exceptional nature does not make them any less dangerous or worthy of being fought for.

It will be necessary to work from a more solid base than a single parliament or a single government which promotes a specific initiative (as happened this time), a wider base than that provided by the support of citizens from a small number of countries. We must be able to circulate a document in as many parliaments as possible of countries in favour of abolition, a document which might be a resolution, a motion, etc., and which should ideally by identical in substance if not in form and procedure, binding governments to present a unitary proposal for a moratorium to the UN. The request for the inclusion of the issue on the agenda must reach New York by 20 August for it to be discussed in this year's session.

Last year we tested out a method and gained experience. The analysis of the behaviour and the vote of the various countries now allows more adequate, flexible and intelligent considerations and proposals. The United States, which voted in favour of the inclusion of the issue on the agenda and against the insidious no-action motions aimed at preventing discussion (thus showing an open and liberal position in terms of procedure), then expressed a firm "no" to the moratorium in the final vote. It is significant, however, that the delegates from the US never took the floor during the whole debate. The US did not openly obtain a legitimization of a judicial practice which 36 states in the American Federation apply in a systematic manner. They entrusted the Islamic countries with the task of fighting together for the retention of capital punishment. Thus Algeria and Egypt led the countries which were against the moratorium, voting against the inclusion of the issue on the agenda and presenting no-action motions in

order to forestall discussion. It is significant and saddening that two of the very few secular countries in the Arab world were, at the UN, determined supporters and standard-bearers of the view that the Koran is also criminal law - those which, within their confines, make wide use of the death penalty against fundamentalists.

The countries of the former Soviet Union behaved in a fairly uniform manner. They voted in favour of putting the moratorium on the agenda, and by abstaining in the final vote, they probably intended to represent the state of the debate in their own countries. In all the countries of the former USSR, the death penalty is now applicable for a very small number of crimes; in Russia, thanks to the efforts of the Presidential Commission for Grace, chaired by writer Anatoli Pristavkin, a member of the Executive Council of "Hands Off Cain", a de factu moratorium is in force. Meanwhile, the discussion on the new constitutions and the new penal codes is continuing in all these countries.

The role played on the world stage by the Catholic Church has always gone beyond its national confines, and throughout his papacy the message of Pope John Paul II has often gone beyond the confines of the Catholic religion themselves. At times, for example in the appeal against the warlords in the former Yugoslavia, the transnational role of the Vatican and the universal message of the Pope have made up for the absence, the inadequacy and the impotence of the United Nations Organization. By signing a decree last year to reintroduce the death penalty, and by voting two months ago at the United Nations against the moratorium, the President of the Catholic Philippines on one hand, and a number of delegates from Islamic countries on the other, highlighted the fact that not even the New Catechism of the Catholic Church excludes in principle recourse to the death penalty.

To solicit a univocal and inequivocal interpretation of the New Catechism can give rise to a new opportunity to form consciences and establish common rules on increasingly new thresholds of inviolability of the human being. Millions of people see the Cross as a symbol of peace, love and brotherhood; very few recall that it has been the atrocious instrument of capital punishment. As the Catholic Church prepares to celebrate its great Jubilee in the year 2000 - the very deadline we have set for the abolition of the death penalty in the world! - we remain hopeful that the Church will work to ensure that the right that men have assumed, to kill other men "legally", will be merely a memory of the millenium which is drawing to a close.

The Palm Sunday March which we have organized again this year - to coincide with the last day of the Congress - from the Capitol to St Peter's Square, with the presence of mayors, parliamentarians and citizens who support abolition, aims to see in the words of the Pope a sign that will allow us to hope that the Catholic Church will make a direct commitment to the cause of abolition.

POSSIBLE INITIATIVES

Again in 1995, it would be extremely valuable to organize three major world conferences in the three places that we can consider - partly in the light of what happened at the United Nations - to be decisive for the abolitionist campaign.

A Conference in New York, with American supporters of abolition, the United Nations and American politicians willing to discuss a moratorium on executions. We are convinced that the United States is a decisive testing-ground for our campaign. At a time when the decision of the American Congress last year to restrict arms sales hinted, for the first time, at a way of facing crime which is different from that which requires institutional violence, the request for a moratorium may find considerable support.

A second Conference in Moscow, with the jurists and parliamentarians who are drawing up the new constitutions. The positive outcome of their work on constitutions and legislations may swing the balance in favour of the states that support abolition.

Finally, a difficult but remarkable Conference in Tunis, with Islamic jurists, intellectuals who are victims of religious fanaticism, parliamentarians, human rights activists, and President Ben Al, who we know to be a firm supporter of abolition. Many states in the Arab world execute their own citizens. Some, upheld by confessional regimes, call on centuries-old traditions and deep-rooted religious convictions. Others, with secular foundations, put forward the reasons of a serious terrorist emergency which threatens the bases of their security. We cannot write off the former as "barbarians". Nor can we "justify" the latter. For both it is worth recalling the words of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfuz, the victim of a knife attack by fundamentalists. An advocate of dialogue and tolerance, Mahfuz has said that those who sew violence not only destroy their own lives but also bring disgrace to Islam, which is tolerance and not criminal fanaticism. He has also said that he is convinced that repression is not enou

gh to fight fundamentalism. He is right: what is needed, in fact, is persuasion. We must proceed in that direction and unite around the "irreducible human quality" which - in the words of Boutros Ghali - "makes us all a single community".

5. THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE

"To act... in parliaments and in the international agencies in support of the spread and the gradual adoption, including the formal adoption, of the International Language as a concrete instrument for the guarantee of the right to language, of the safeguard of the linguistic and cultural ecosystem of the planet, and of the growth, beyond nationality, of a common world identity belonging to the single human family." These words are taken from the motion of the General Council of the Radical Party held in Sofia from 15 to 18 July 1993. However, the project for the right to the international language was to be drastically redimensioned, a consequence of the serious financial situation of the party at the end of 1993. Compared to the planned sum of approximately 750 million lire, the budget available for investment in the campaign was to be reduced fifteen-fold. We have tried, however, to bear in mind and "invest" with our presence and that of the ARE all the institutional contexts: the European Parliament, the

international agencies (and UNESCO in particular), and the Italian Parliament and government.

In 1954 and 1985, UNESCO approved two Resolutions in favour of Esperanto. Our aim was to accelerate the progress of the campaign from this starting point. In November 1993, the party organized a demonstration in Paris during the 26th General Conference of the agency. The demonstration, and a meeting with a UNESCO delegation, led to the full acceptance by the Director General of the Resolution on Esperanto presented by the Italian government and promoted by the Radical Party.

In virtue of this commitment and of the directives issued by the Director General with regard to the Resolution, the Esperanto Radikala Asocio presented a project for the experimentation of the International Language in the world. The project was approved by the National UNESCO Commission, and by UNESCO in Paris, which also funded it. The project now involves over a hundred schools in about 100 countries in all corners of the world.

In Europe, we have pursued the project for the emendment of the new EU programmes on education and training, the Socrates and Leonardo Programmes, but the lack of a European deputy on the Culture Commission who could carry out constant information and persuasion was a decisive factor in the failure of the plan. The excellent demonstration that we organized on the occasion of the vote on the Leonardo Programme, attended by Esperantists from 16 countries in Europe and from Tanzania and China, was successful only in persuading the rapporteur, Von Alemann, not to recommend a negative vote on the emendments.

We have established a positive relationship with several economists from Italy and other countries (including Prof. Berti, Prof. Ridolfi, Prof. Maerten, and the recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, Prof. Selten), who have calculated the cost of "non-communication" among European citizens and demonstrated the need for a European "federal language". The economists have provided us with short studies of a general nature; we must now set up a fully-fledged working group within the European institutions, perhaps directed by Prof. Selten himself, to draw up a report to be submitted to the institutions of the EU, the member countries, and the citizens of Europe.

There is a great need for a specific European campaign in favour of Esperanto. In an institution in which eleven different languages are spoken, a federal language that could be learnt at school is not only a right and a guarantee of "equal opportunity" for all Euro-citizens, but is also a real structural and financial need for the institutions, a condition for the transnational development of small and medium-size businesses in all the countries of the EU, and an essential instrument for the complete mobility of workers. It is therefore a right of European consumers to know how much they are spending and how much is wasted because of the lack of communication at transnational level. As a EU Commissioner, I will make it my business to ensure that such a study is carried out; a fully-fledged report (as in the traditions of the Community) into the costs of "linguistic non-communication", including working proposals. Such proposals will strengthen the campaign for Esperanto. We need only consider the costs of t

he translation of legal documents and legislation into the various languages of the EU, which greatly increase contentious procedures. There is a pressing need to fight for the use of Esperanto as the lingua franca of European law.

Article 27 of the 1976 Treaty on civil and political rights, and the recent Declaration on the rights of those belonging to linguistic minorities, approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 21 December 1992, confirm the right of these people to use their own language. Esperanto does not compete with other languages, like Latin and French in the past, English in the modern world, and who knows which language in the future. Esperanto is an auxiliary language, whose promotion and spread would support the right to language as a fundamental human right. We could take action to urge the Human Rights Committee to demand, and subsequently keep check on, the use of the International Language in national legal systems on the occasion of the examination of the national Reports presented by the States endorsing the Treaty.

We must also urge the UN Commission on Education, Science and Culture to draft a Convention for the spread and gradual adoption of Esperanto as an international auxiliary language.

Finally, an event which should be recalled with particular pleasure, in that it goes far beyond the simple account of initiatives and their success (or failure). In response to the request made by the Radical Party, the Pope decided to include Esperanto among the language used for his traditional Easter "urbi et orbi" message. This was an important piece of news for Esperantists. And since John Paul II also used Esperanto for his Christmas message, we can justifiably hope that he will continue in the future to encourage the Esperantist cause. We must not lose sight of this prospect, and use it as a constant, invaluable point of reference. We would like to thank Pope John Paul II, once again, on behalf of this Congress.

PROSPECTS AND POSSIBLE INITIATIVES

On this issue, too, we have to take two parallel paths: we must develop information and the awareness of international public opinion (the insertion in the New York Times on 28 September 1994 also served to present the question of Esperanto), while on the other hand we must press the UN and UNESCO to draw up international Conventions on the use of Esperanto in international and transnational contexts. And in the light of the favourable attention given to the issue by UNESCO, we will immediately invite the Secretary General to order a study of a first international Convention.

6. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST PANDEMICS

(AIDS AND EMERGING VIRUSES)

At the end of the first decade of experience, it is clear that the fight against Aids has been conducted in an ineffective and unrealistic manner. In substance, the battle has been based on the hope for a scientific miracle, the discovery of a vaccine or an antidote. But it has not been easy to identify the path to be taken to improve international commitment - although we have tried to do so ever since the very rough indication contained in the Sofia motion, which required us to strengthen "the fight against Aids, in every institutional framework, with particular regard to the African continent".

In December 1993, however, during the Eighth World Conference on Aids in Africa, held in Marrakech, the Radical Party put forward a project for an international campaign on Aids, and also on pandemics in general, with the aim of filling a gap in the international juridical and institutional framework and of finding a means of responding at international level and in a concerted manner to pandemics, whether they be the HIV virus or other emerging viruses (Ebola, Marburg, Junin...)

In our opinion, what is needed is the institution of a supranational organ with binding powers to ensure the application of measures that have been accepted at global level.

One reasonable starting point could be a UN Convention taking account of the following points:

(I) the defence of the human and civil rights of people who are HIV-positive or who have Aids;

(II) free access for patients to medicines, especially in the developing countries;

(III) the promotion of the use of condoms;

(IV) the guarantee of supplies of uncontaminated blood in hospitals;

(V) syringe exchange programmes for drug addicts; anti-prohibitionist policies on drugs;

(VI) the modification of the structure of the UN agencies, optimizing efforts through a direct hierarchy, with the personal involvement of the Secretary General and the appointment of a respected international expert as Programme Director;

(VII) the relaunch of specializations in virology and epidemiology; the organization of a national and international system of control; greater incentives for research on the developing countries, both pure and applied;

(VIII) the promotion and safeguard of the right to information and the right to health;

(IX) the improvement of the social status of women;

(X) the reinforcement of financial co-operation and North-South policy;

Having taken into consideration the observations and comments of the scientific community, we presented the project in February 1994 during the course of two official events, in Genoa and in Sofia.

Despite the fact that a number of important events took place during 1994 which could have allowed us to develop the campaign (the World Conference in Yokohama in August, and the Paris Summit in December), the party has had to suspend the campaign, once again due to lack of funds. At the beginning of 1995, however, we will be organizing an international conference, together with the Piedmont Regional Council, to resume and relaunch the campaign at a suitable level.

7. THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE INSTITUTION OF THE DANUBE AUTHORITY

In the last few months, a debate has developed in the party to try to identify possible lines of action on the Danube issue, starting out from the proposals contained in the report and the conclusions of the Sofia Congress. In Sofia, the emphasis was placed on the institutional and ecological project regarding a supranational Authority for the management of the river basin. In the debate, however, "Danube" soon became a metaphor: the symbolic force of a river which flows through cities such as Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade, and which is linked by the Konstanz canal to the Rhine and the North Sea, came to indicate a much wider range of issues related to the emergence of new democracies in the area, threatened by the laceration of old institutions and by linguistic or ethnic differences, and at the same time favoured by the request on the part of some of these countries to join the European Union.

Starting out from the institutional and ecological questions regarding the river, the "Danube" issue bacame the representative of the great challenge which Europe will face in the next few years, a challenge which requires an immediate and clear response. The debate has not reached a conclusion, a line of action, or a political proposal, but is still at the stage of reflection and analysis.

The endorsement of the Convention for Co-operation signed by many countries through which the Danube passes, and by other countries (Sofia, June 1994), and the progress towards ratification by the national parliaments, has undoubtedly reduced the importance of the outcome of the debate on the specific issue of the numerous and complex problems of the management of the river.

The debate, however, has outlined tendencies and problems which need to be pointed out. In particular, two hypotheses emerged which are, I believe, not necessarily mutually exclusive. The first is the idea, or the need, to put forward a project for a "Balkan-Danubian Confederation" as the political, cultural and economic driving-force of the development of the entire region, founded on the principles of a modern federalism aimed at defeating nationalistic antagonism and the egoism of poverty, and at giving a wide, supranational dimension to the new Balkan democracies, saving them from the call of fratricidal traditions and the risk of conflicts that would otherwise be inevitable in the light of the complexity of the ethnic, cultural and religious make-up of the region (as happens in other parts of Europe with the same characteristics). The proposal for a "Balkan Confederation" would give an institutional framework to the self-fulfilment of the region, even if some of the countries involved were to join the E

uropean Union: moreover, it is necessary both to defuse potential cultural conflicts and arguments over borders and to ensure that these countries do not arrive separately, or even selfishly divided, at the appointment with the European Union.

The second hypothesis proposes the immediate involvement of the countries of this region in the European Union: a process which is already underway for some of the countries of Central Europe, but which is still subject to the will of the governments of the member countries, and also to the will of the Union as a whole - increasingly divided and short-sighted in their vision of the steps to be taken to give shape to the political Europe. Unfortunately, however, discussions continue in the Union on the supposed need for a "Mediterranean balance" to be respected, on division according to area of interest, and on economic occupation, without taking account of the fact that the European Union of the future must face up to the problems of the entire continent.

In the background, however, the proposal to create an Authority and a European Community of Rivers and Great Waterways is still valid: two ideas whose power would make an institutional breach in the heart of Europe and underline its current inefficacy and division.

The "Danube" metaphor, with its reminder of centuries-old attempts at institutional development, regionalist or federalist, imperialist or Communist, but above - in the future - democratic, has highlighted the great potential of the Radical Party as the political vehicle of reflection and action able to overcome the contradictions within the Western diplomacies; those which we saw, unfortunately, at the European summit in Essen and in the meeting of the OSCE (formerly the CSCE) held in Budapest in December 1994. Well in advance, our attempt to organize the Party Congress in Zagreb in 1989 was a tragic prediction of the events in the former Yugoslavia. Do you remember? Our slogan was "Yugoslavia in the EEC, now!", and then "Hungary in the EEC, now!"...

We are still firmly convinced, as we predicted by organizing our Congress in Budapest in 1989, that the Danubian area will continue for a long time to knock at our door to present its need for entry into Europe: a need which is economic and political, formed by economic aid, the mobility of the workforce, environmental reconstruction, the exchange of information, and a different model of industrial production to replace Socialist planning. Attempts to restore the institutions to health through federalist and inter-regional experiments have always failed because they have been faced by the barriers of antagonism, nationalist egoism, and ethnic division. Through our recent experience, and through our mere presence in many of the capitals of Central Europe, we have come to realise that the majority of our successes or failures will be related to the growth or the failure of these democracies, to their integration or otherwise in the decision-making processes of the whole of Europe.

But if it is true that the Danubian countries need Europe, then it is also true that the rich Europe of the EU needs to open up to the less developed countries to the East. It needs to do so in order to prevent the process of integration from being managed, or delayed, by the governments and by centrifugal political choices, and in order to give the EU the strength to overcome the obstacles that are causing it to become an exclusively intergovernmental entity, whilst the Europe of the people continues to be an illusion or, what is worse, an empty statement.

The "Danube" issue is all this: it is a political proposal to be defined and perfected - but not a Utopia - which we prefer to leave to the memories and the very real dreams of Lajos Kossuth, Aurel Popvici, or Miklos Wesselenyi, or to the tragic premonitions of Marshall Tito.

The Party in the World

B. THE SITUATION OF THE PARTY AROUND THE WORLD

1. CENTRAL EUROPE

(Albania, Austria, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kossovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Turkey, Voivodina)

A general overview

Since the General Council in Sofia, the action of the party in Central and Eastern Europe has had to face both the difficulties of the transformation of the economies and the policies of the former Communist countries to the standards of democratic Europe and the local effects of the war which has been fought in the former Yugoslavia since July 1991, with obvious negative consequences over the whole region.

From this very region, however, there has been notable support for the campaigns organized by the party on objectives concerned with the desire for justice as the only conceivable basis for lasting peace: the campaigns for the ad hoc Tribunal and for the creation of the Permanent International Court. Both have been perceived as relevant and absolutely necessary.

Parliamentarians, citizens and intellectuals from all the countries in the area have demonstrated their support by signing appeals, and also by means of hunger strikes and militant initiatives. One statistic will suffice: out of the 708 signatures of parliamentarians from all over the world in support of the international Court, 204 came from these countries, without counting the members of government and the hundreds of mayors and well-known personalities.

In all the countries considered, mobilization has led for the first time to the systematic convocation of meetings at the highest institutional and governmental levels. Direct contact has been made with the Hungarian Foreign Minister, Kovacs, the Croatian President, Tudjman, the President of the Albanian Parliament, Abnori, and the Bosnian co-President, Pejanovic. The Radical Party has gained from these contacts in both visibility and credibility.

Even when the hoped-for results have not been achieved, we have in any case demonstrated the weakness and the susceptibility to blackmail of these countries. This dramatic condition explains their sudden changes of position and about-turns in the United Nations, which are inevitable without a solid foundation in the political and economic context of Europe and the European Union. Not all of this is the fault of these countries and their governments. The call to become part of the European Union from the majority of these countries remains unheard or diluted in the Eurocratic sea of sloth. The lack of response from Europe to the war, to ethnic cleansing, and to the explosive drama of three and a half million refugees, has even led to the growth of centrifugal tendencies and the formation of dangerous blocs of opposing interests.

It is now absolutely essential, for these countries and for the very survival of the European Union, as well as for peace, to press for the effective operation of the ad hoc Tribunal, which is still practically inoperative due to inadequate funding, for the constitution of the International Court, and also for political support from the countries in the region for a federal and democratic European Union. The party must work with all its energy to bring about these goals.

In Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria in particular, a debate on anti-prohibitionism has been set into motion by means of assemblies and intervention in the mass media. The debate, as well as inspiring reactions of support or criticism in the media, has also led to research into the international Conventions on drugs and into their application in local legislation. In countries in which the use of drugs and drugs-related crime are growing at a rapid rate, anti-prohibitionism can be an important instrument for the development of the party. There is, however, still the problem of finding local politicians and recruiting them to our campaigns on an issue which has such strong impact on public opinion, and which is therefore approached with caution by those in public office.

Contact has been made with ecologist organizations and political parties for possible initiatives on the issue of the problems regarding the Danube (problems which are not only of an environmental nature).

We should also note the support and participation of parliamentarians and leading personalities in international meetings and conferences organized by the party in New York, Brussels, and Rome, as well as the great success of the dozens of meetings held in Istanbul, Sarajevo, Tirana, Sofia, Bucharest, etc. (see the exhaustive chronology for further details).

The resistance and the reinforcement of the new democracies, the end of regional conflicts and a just peace, and the rebirth of ravaged economies are issues on which the European Union will be called to provide a response in the coming months, and on which the party foresees possible and valid responses by virtue of a network of political and institutional contacts and the unique nature of its initiatives.

Mass media

The response in the mass media to the party's initiatives varies greatly, ranging from cases of clear censure, as in Romania, to coverage both on television, as in Croatia, and in the press, as in Bulgaria or Albania. On average, the response is still insufficient, partly due to our lack of funds: for more continuous and complete coverage in the mass media, we would need translators and press agents, which the party is currently not able to afford. It should also be remembered that 1994 was the year in which the lowest number of Radical Party publications were printed and distributed in these countries. We tried to make up for this shortcoming by using Agorà Telematica, a rapid and effective instrument for transnational activity, and also through the "Transnational" bulletin. Lack of funds meant that only a limited number were distributed, mainly aimed at informing parliamentarians and newspapers, even in a discontinuous manner. Production in situ, which reduces costs, did however guarantee publication and h

elped both to maintain contacts and to gather signatures.

Members

The 1994 members totalled 522 in the area: 136 of these, given the prevalently qualitative orientation of the membership campaigns in the last three years, were parliamentarians. There were also exponents of the world of culture, politics, and journalism, and a small number of ordinary citizens who have maintained a relationship of trust in the party, often over many years, by enrolling and sometimes by participating in initiatives.

A brief word about the situation in the Czech Republic. The Radical presence in the country is discontinuous, although interesting. Last June, the deputy Andrei Gjuric, a member of Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus's ODS Party, presented our motion on the ad hoc Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia. The proposal to include the motion on the agenda was, however, turned down by a majority vote.

In August the Czech edition of Al Gore's book, sponsored by the party, was presented to the press. The ceremony was held at the US Embassy in Prague, the co-sponsor of the book. Again in August, the Radicals reacted to a declaration by Tomas Has, a member of the government's anti-drugs commission, who stated that a provision should be introduced into Czech law providing for the punishment of the use of narcotics, currently not a criminal offence. The response was given wide coverage in the press, and re-opened the debate on legalization, which continued to fill the daily newspapers for some time.

In September, two of the main Czech dailies published lengthy interviews with Carla Rossi. In October four parliamentarians signed the appeal for the International Criminal Court, as did the former Minister for the Environment, Josef Vavrousek, and the Secretary General of the International Romany Union, Emil Scuka.

On 8 December, the Radicals set up a stall in the centre of Prague for the collection of signatures on the "Sarajevo, open city" appeal. The initiative was covered on radio news programmes and on the national TV news.

2. EASTERN EUROPE

(Belorussia, Moldavia)

In June 1993, a Radical delegation led by Andrea Tamburi met with the President of the Moldavian Republic, Mircea Snegur, in Chisinau. At around the same time, a transnational campaign was organized calling for the death penalty to be excluded from the republic's new Constitution. An anti-prohibitionist appeal was also sent to the Moldavian parliament: during last year the appeal was signed by around 3,000 parliamentarians, leading figures, mayors and citizens, not only from the former Soviet Union but also from other countries. The initiative was also given strong support by a considerable number of Moldavian parliamentarians.

This legislature, however, never discussed the new Constitution; after the general election in February 1994, the situation in parliament changed considerably, and the majority coalition (composed by the ex-Communists in the Socialist Party and the Democratic Agrarian Party) voted in October to keep the death penalty in the new Constitution, despite protests from Moldavian intellectuals and the campaign and appeals organized by the Radical Party and "Hands Off Cain". It would have been difficult to achieve a different result in a country where we do not have stable contacts or a fixed base, and where activities have so far been co-ordinated by the Kiev office.

Another important initiative, which started in the very first days of our activities in the summer of 1992, was the campaign for justice and against the violation of human rights in Transnitria, a region still occupied by the Russian army, where the pro-Communist puppet government of the self-proclaimed "Moldavian Republic of Transnitria" was created and lives in the shadow of the Russian bayonets. Our concrete stance in favour of human rights and international law has contributed to the Radical success in Moldavia. As part of this campaign, an initiative was organized in the winter of 1993 in defence of Ilie Ilascu, a professor at the University of Tiraspol and the President of the Moldavian Helsinki Group, who was arrested by the Transnitrian separatists in Tiraspol (the capital of the self-proclaimed Republic) and sentenced to death as a "terrorist" and "spy". The initiative was launched on 10 December 1993 from the platform of the Founding Congress of "Hands Off Cain" in Brussels.

A public assembly of the party was held on 24 February in Chisinau. No representatives of the party have been to the city since that date, due, as usual, to lack of funds. As part of the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty, a Moldavian delegation did, however, take part in the 1994 Easter March, and significant comments by Petru Munteanu and Alecu Renita were published in the Moldavian mass media, which have always guaranteed excellent coverage of our activities.

Almost all the one hundred or so members or supporters in Moldavia are parliamentarians or leading journalists (including Alexandru Dorogan, the director of Radio Moldavia, and Zola Golban, editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Nezavisimaja Moldova". Despite this, only 34 people in Moldavia joined the party in 1994, compared to 91 in 1993 and 100 in 1992. The resons for this fall in numbers are many: the lack of funds to visit Moldavia and organize political action, the fact that it is not possible to transfer money from Moldavia after the introduction of the new currency, and so on.

The attempt to acquire the use of a room in the Moldavian parliament in the framework of the 1993 Transnational Newsletter project, which at one point promised to be successful, was blocked after the elections due both to the completely new situation of parliament and to our financial problems.

3. RUSSIA

During the last year and a half (since the General Council in Sofia in July 1993), the Radical Party in Russia has found itself working in rather difficult conditions, both in political terms and in terms of organization.

The political crisis of September 1993 between President Yeltsin and the Soviet Supreme, the revolt and the subsequent capture of the White House on 3 and 4 October, the general election of 12 December and the formation of the new parliament - the Duma and the Federal Council - have led to a completely new situation in Russia and have brought new figures onto the stage: we have consequently had to establish new contacts, starting almost from scratch.

On the other hand, it should be pointed out that these political changes have given us the chance to build up the Radical presence on an almost virgin terrain, free of the misunderstandings and the errors of the past.

Our work in Russia and throughout the former Soviet Union has, however, also been disrupted by a painful, unacceptable event: the murder of Andrea Tamburi, the co-ordinator of Radical Party activities in the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which took place in Moscow in February 1994. It is difficult to describe how much, apart from a friend and a tireless activist, we have lost through the death of Andrea Tamburi. Perhaps the nature of the brutal murder itself - which we will make sure is finally investigated by the judicial authorities - can help us to understand the invaluable, serious and wide-reaching scope of Andrea's work in Moscow and throughout the country: perhaps he was beginning to be seen as an inconvenient, unacceptable and dangerous presence by a country which is still diffident and far from the ideals and the practice of tolerance, liberalism and democratic pluralism. I would like to take this opportunity - and I am sure you will join me - to remember our friend and comrad

e Andrea Tamburi with affection and grief.

In order to evaluate the activity of the party in Russia, we must turn our attention to the campaign for the International Criminal Court, during which the party managed, for the first time in its history in the Soviet Union and in Russia, to obtain a wide response from parliamentarians, mayors, governors, and well-known public figures: more than 300 people signed the appeal to the United Nations, including 57 members of the Duma from all parties, one senator, 17 mayors, 4 governors and two ministers.

We received postive reactions, requests for further information about our activities, and invitations from almost twenty local administrations to visit their cities, from the border with Estonia to the Pacific Ocean, from the Polar Circle to the Caucasus. Only lack of funds prevented us from developing this response by visiting the cities and organizing meetings with mayors and public assemblies.

Among the people who have given their support to our initiatives are Garry Kasparov, the chess master, Rolan Bykov, film producer, Aleksandr Jakovlev, chairman of the Ostankino TV company, Adolf Shaevich, Head Rabbi of Russia, the university professors Stanislav Shatalin, Igor Bestuzhev-Lada and Jurij Afanasjev, and the writer Lev Timofeev. Among the main reasons for our success is the considerable logistic achievement with regard to the campaign on the Criminal Court: the Moscow office sent out more than 3,000 letters and faxes, made hundreds of phone calls, and accurately recorded each reply on its computer databases.

In Russia, the party has not restricted itself to the promotion of the main campaigns proposed by the Congress and the General Council; it has intervened in and given immediate and appropriate responses to many of the political challenges of the country. One example is what happened on the occasion of the anti-Aids measure adopted by the Duma in autumn 1994. Since it laid down obligatory Aids tests for all foreign nationals crossing the border, the measure was denounced as an open violation of human rights by the mass media in Russia and all over the world. The party immediately started to act, with an appeal to activists and to readers of Izvestija to send telegrams to the Federal Council and a demonstration outside the High Chamber of the Russian Parliament on the day of the debate. The demostration was called off at the last moment because the Federal Council decided not to discuss the measure, and to submit it directly to the President, who subsequently exercised his power of veto.

Another campaign, resumed in 1994 after the struggles in 1991, was that on the right to refuse to do national service. Although it is laid down by the Constitution of December 1993, the right has still not been inscribed in the country's legislation. In July 1994 the Russian Radicals, in collaboration with the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, drew up a memorandum of criticisms of the bill on conscientious objection presented in the Duma. The emendments presented by the Radical Party and the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers state that alternative civilian service should not be longer than military service, that no examination can be prepared to check on believers, and that it should be possible, on request, to do alternative voluntary service outside the territory of the Russian Federation. The bill was approved by the Duma in December 1994 (which in itself is positive), but without providing any response to the three questions. Before becoming law, however, it must undergo at least two other readings, which wil

l allow us to prepare further initiatives.

In a wider sense, 1994 and the beginning of 1995 can be considered as a period in which the party has renewed its anti-militarist presence in Russia, in the context of a completely new political and logistic situation, through the initiative regarding the the bill on conscientious objection, and the reaction to the outbreak of war in Chechnya (which will be dealt with in a separate section). There is now a prospect of a large-scale campaign, including the initiative against conscription, which can only be launched in 1995 if the party finds a way to continue its activities.

During the last year and a half, the party has successfully organized a considerable number of street demonstrations in Russia, especially in Moscow (see note for complete list). Almost all of them were given wide coverage by the Russian press and TV, mainly due to a well orchestrated information campaign. Press releases were automatically faxed to more than 200 Russian and foreign media organs (party workers in Russia have recently also started to send out press releases via Internet e-mail and the Sprint fax service). Excellent relations have been established with the following news agencies: Interfax, Express-Khronika, Radio Liberty, Tele Russia, Tele 2x2, and Open Radio.

The lack of investments, apart from a few small sums, has forced us to give up many initiatives, especially after June 1994. All the activities in Russia have been co-ordinated by the Moscow office: after the re-organization in December 1993, there were only three staff until a fourth member arrived in May. To give an idea of the conditions in which our comrades are working, I might point out that they have a total of three computers, one photocopier and one fax machine.

The party has not carried out any large-scale membership campaigns during the last year and a half. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds, it has only been possible to call three public assemblies in Russian Cities (see note).

Despite this, however, there were almost 250 members at the end of 1994. In terms of quantity, this is a long way from the 1992 total of 2,859 and the 1993 total of 972, but in terms of "quality" our presence in Russia in 1994 was significant. The steep increase in the minimum membership fee has led to an income which is more then symbolic, although the gap between the cost of political initiatives and the membership fees means that self-funding is still not possible. This situation may change with the potential growth of the anti-militarist front, given the current developments in the country.

One important event was the publication of a page of information in the "Izvestija" newspaper, on 2 December 1994. This was the first time the party had publicized its activities in a Russian newspaper since the Komsomolskaja Pravda in 1991 and 1992. Unlike previous occasions, however, the December 1994 insertion was a good opportunity to present not only a general overview of the Radical Party, but also information about successes obtained in Russia (mainly regarding the campaign for the international Court), to the Russian public (including decision-makers, who form the bulk of the Izvestija's readers). More than 150 replies were received following this initiative.

In December 1993 we managed to bring a prestigious Russian delegation (including Anatoli Pristavkin, the President of the Amnesty Commission of the Russian President and one of the main opponents of the death penalty) to the founding conference of "Hands Off Cain" in Brussels. In April 1994, a sizeable Russian delegation took part in the Easter March in Rome and the meeting of the Executive Council of "Hands Off Cain". In May, two members of the Duma - Irina Khakamada and Vladimir Lepekhin - took part in the Conference in Rome for the denouncement of the UN Conventions on drugs.

As well as organizing the political campaigns and the various initiatives, the Moscow office also carries out a considerable amount of "day-to-day" work. In 1994, 9 issues of Transnational were translated, printed and distributed in Russia, Belorussia, and Central Asia, with a total of over 40,000 copies. The importance of the newsletter for communication and mobilization has been enormous, especially in the light of the situation in the former Soviet Union - there is no Radio Radicale and very few private individuals have access to a PC and a modem, so that the newsletter is the only link between the party and its members and supporters.

The day-to-day work of the office consists in registering new members, sending out membership cards and other mail to members, and replying to the letters which arrive every day. Unfortunately, lack of funds means that it has not been possible to provide Agorà with more information on political developments and an exhaustive press review of the Russian mass media (the costs of translation, in particular, cannot be covered). This service is, however, important, and should be resumed (using, for example, the Interfax releases) as soon as it is possible.

As well as the Moscow Office, the party also has a smaller office in St Petersberg, with one part-time worker and a network of around 10/15 activists, and the use of a fax machine and computer (without a modem). We also have a network of about 50 contacts in various cities (in particular Voronhez, Tula, Orehovo-Zuevo, Novgorod and Lesosibirsk, a region of Krasnojarsk), with which the Moscow office maintains regular contact by phone and by post. Ultimately, however, our presence in Russia is concentrated in Moscow and, to a lesser extent, St Petersberg.

4. UKRAINE

The Radical office in Kiev opened in March 1992. It was the second office to be set up in the former Soviet Union, after Moscow, and also has to take care of other countries. In this sense, its role is similar to that of the offices in Sofia, Zagreb, Budapest and Brussels. Its sphere of responsibility covers the Ukraine, Moldavia, and part of the Baltic area. In a technical sense, Kiev is also the main office in the territory of the former Soviet Union: it is responsible, for example, for the registration of membership information and its transmission via Agorà to the central membership office. The Kiev office frequently sends out post to the countries in its sphere of competence, and also to Russia, Transcaucasia and Central Asia, mainly because postal charges are lower. Relatively good computer communication between Moscow and Kiev makes it possible to share work between the two offices. The office has two computers and one fax machine. Since Nikolaj Khramov returned to Moscow in March 1994, the Kiev offic

e has had three full-time staff and one other person who deals with computer data and translation.

The Kiev office is important not only because it is necessary to have a base in a country as large as Ukraine, where there are hundreds of active members, or because it is "a cheap post office". The political situation in the former Soviet Union makes it difficult to use Moscow as a base for organizing and conducting political activities (including Radical activities) in other countries in the Commonwelath of Independent States (not to mention the Baltic States). Kiev is a suitable "neutral" base which can also be used to contact Tallinn and Riga, where it is even possible for the political career of a deputy to be damaged if he receives correspondence in Russian with a return address in Moscow.

Unfortunately, conditions in the Ukraine in the last year and a half have not helped in the development of our political initiatives. The catastrophic economic sitaution, the increasing poverty of the people due to lack of reforms, the hard winter of 1993-94 without Russian gas supplies, the "Cold War" with Russia caused by the Russian claims on the Crimea and disagreement over the division of the Black Sea fleet, the conflicts between the President and the Parliament, which paralyzed the Ukrainian Parliament from summer 1993 to the last election in March 1994, and the presidential election in June and July of 1994, have all tended to distract the attention of the people from "distant" problems (for those who are experiencing similar suffering) such as the war in Yugoslvia, the campaign for the International Criminal Court, and the moratorium on executions.

Despite this, the party in the Ukraine has been active and has achieved considerable success in the "general" political campaigns. From June 1993 to summer 1994, a campaign was organized in Moldavia against the inclusion of the death penalty in the new constitution, co-ordinated from Kiev. A Ukrainian delegation took part in the Easter March in Rome. Valeri Ivasjuk, President of the National Anti-Aids Committee and a member of the Radical Party, took an active part in the Conference on the UN Conventions on drugs held in Rome in May.

In the Ukraine, as in Russia, the main objective of our political activity in 1994 was the campaign for the institution of the International Criminal Court, during which we achieved unprecedented results. The appeal to the United Nations was signed by 23 parliamentarians from almost all groups, the mayors of Kiev and Kharkov, and many leading personalities such as Boris Paton, President of the National Academy of Science, the actor Bogdan Benjuk, and Juri Hudjakov, Vice President of the Union of Ukrainian Architects. The campaign helped to present the image of the party to the newly-elected members of the Supreme Council, and to establish excellent relations with some of them, including, for example, Sergei Golovatyj, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Supreme Council, who has joined the party in 1995, and Vice Admiral Boris Kozhin, former Commander of the Ukrainian Navy and currently a parliamentarian.

Many successful actions and demonstrations have been organized over the last two years, always given ample coverage by the press (see note for a full list).

All these events have been given wide coverage in the press. In general, the party's relations with the mass media (above all with the UNIAR press agency and UNIAR TV, the UNIAN press agency, the the "Vseukrainskie" newspaper) can be considered to be good. The reason - apart from the regular distribution of press releases - is also the excellent personal relations between Radicals in Kiev and leading journalists, many of whom are members of the party.

Five public assemblies were held in Ukraine in 1994, more than in the rest of the CIS and the Baltic states put together. Three were held in January: the first on the 8th, in Kiev, was attended by the Vice Director of the UN office in Kiev, Bogdan Lisovich; the second was held on the 15th in Dnepropetrovsk; and the third was held on 22nd in Kharkov. Each was attended by between 50 and 100 people. Another assembly was held in Kiev on 11 May, with almost 100 participants. A small meeting was organized on 10 September in Feodosia, in Crimea. Only lack of funds prevented further meetings in Ukrainian cities. The assemblies were almost the only way of attracting members in 1994, with between 5 and 15 new members at each meeting. This is one of the reasons for the reduction in members in the former Soviet regions: 144 in 1994, compared to 644 in 1993 and 1,113 in 1992. It was not possible to finance publicity in the newspapers, with the exception of an insertion in "Kievskie Vedomosti", in mid-December 1994, as pa

rt of the "New York, New York" campaign.

The Kiev office is the only one in the Ukraine. It is frequented by about 15 activists who take part regularly in party activities. There is a useful network of more than 60 contacts" throughout the country, in all the 26 regions and almost all the main cities: Kharkov, Odessa, Lvov, Denepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporozhje, Zhitomir, Sumy, Ivano-Frankovsk, etc. The network can be considered one of the best in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and is made up of friends, members, and activists capable of promoting their own initiatives in collaboration with Kiev (as in Dnepropetrovsk). The main reason for this healthy state of affairs is the hard work carried out outside the capital from 1992 onwards, with dozens of assemblies in many cities.

In conclusion, the positive results achieved in the Ukraine in 1994 are no less significant and important than those achieved in Russia, and only the dramatic lack of funds prevents the party from obtaining even greater success. Since June 1994, for example, it has not been possible to organize any kind of activity, in particular a campaign against the inclusion of the death penalty in the new Ukrainian Criminal Code.

5. BALTIC COUNTRIES

(Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)

In a context characterized by the application by the Baltic states to join NATO, the intensification of their relations with the Nordic countries and the admission of Finland and Sweden into the European Union, the Baltic-Scandinavian geo-political area is beginning to become an established and visible part of the Western institutions: within this area, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, for historical, economic and social reasons, are still to some extent a bridge with the CIS, in particular with Russia. The continuing problems caused by the transition from a Soviet economy to a free market economy, the serious environmental situation, the inheritance of inadequate infrastructures and laws, and the presence of substantial Slav minorities make the Baltic countries a delicately balanced area in which there is a deep-felt need for immediate and necessary integration with Europe.

In recent years, the party has been involved above all in the issue of minority rights. While Lithuania granted citizenship to non-autochthonous inhabitants after the restoration of independence, the same right has only been granted to a very small number of people in Estonia and Latvia, with the result that there is tension between the various parts of the population and sometimes conflict with the Russian Federation. The completion of the withdrawal of Russian troops helped to defuse the crisis, but it is not yet completely over.

In order to encourage dialogue between the parties and to support the rights of individuals and minorities laid down by the international conventions, in 1993 the party organized a successful international Conference in Tallinn after a number of preparatory meetings. The subsequent financial crisis of the Radical Party made it necessary to postpone a second Conference for the development of the debate, planned to be held in Riga in autumn 1994; the urgent need for such a conference is, however, still very evident. The ethnic conflicts in progress in post-Communist Europe, the explosions of violence on the Russian borders, and the unsolved issues of the status of Carelia and the territory of Kaliningrad-Koenigsberg are a warning that great attention and energy must be devoted, at international level, to the peaceful solution of the conflicts; and in the Baltic area the Radical Party has built up the necessary experience and relations to be able to play a role in this process.

Altogether, a total of about 100 people in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined the Radical Party, with a fall during the course of 1994 (as in the other countries). Because of our interest in the problems of the minorities, there have been greater difficulties in establishing relations with the new parliamentarians in Estonia and Latvia, whilst in Lithuania a nucleus of members made up of seven deputies, including the Minister of Defence Linas Linkevicius, and other leading figures, has allowed us to maintain an active presence and to promote our transnational initiatives with success, even in the year when funds were reduced - all this with very low running costs to cover a modest office in Vilnius and a few meetings for members in the three capitals.

Particular thanks are due to the philosopher Iokubas Minkevicius, a member of the Lithuanian Academy of Science and a member of the Radical Party since 1992, whose commitment to the promotion of the issues, the proposals and the methods of the party has continued this year with the publication of exhaustive articles in the Lithuanian press.

6. CAUCASIAN COUNTRIES

(Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia)

The work carried out in the Caucasian Republics has led to reasonable, perhaps even satisfactory results considering the fact that we have had (and continue to have) very little in the way of human and financial resources, that our offices do not have computers or modems, and that we spend very little on political initiatives: our budget amounts to 50 dollars a month in Baku, and 25 dollars a month in Erevan and Tbilisi, barely enough for technical costs alone.

All the campaigns conducted in the three countries (newspaper insertions, TV and radio interviews, etc.) have been made possible by the activities of militants. There has been considerable interest from politicians, however, and even with a minimal budget we obtained considerable success last year with the campaign for the Permanent Criminal Court, collecting the signatures of parliamentarians and leading figures for the appeals. We can also consider as important successes the enrolment of Arif Ragim-Zade, the Vice President of the Azerbaijan Parliament and a trusted advisor of the President of the Republic, Heydar Aliev, and the fact that the Georgian President Edward Shevardnadze sent a letter to the International Law Commission in support of the Italian motion at the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Enrolments, on the other hand, have been much lower this year in both Armenia and Georgia, whilst Azerbaijan has maintained the same number of members. Although it is not the only explanation, the membership fee (3 dollars) is rather high in relation to the average monthly wage in these countries - 40 cents in Georgia and only slightly higher in Armenia. In Armenia, we have also met with problems of communication due to the almost complete lack of electricity, which has made telephone communication almost impossible and paralyzed the co-ordination of initiatives.

Although very different, the three countries are all characterized by serious political crises. Constant attention, the establishment and maintenance of contacts, and the ability to refine judgement are needed in order to understand the possible developments. The area is important in geo-political terms because the future of the entire region, and that of Russia, depends on the process of restoration of peace which is in progress (in Abkhazia and Nagorny-Karaback) and on the outcome of the conflicts, especially that in Chechyna. It would be a mistake to think that it is possible to co-ordinate political initiatives in these republics from Moscow or Kiev: a presence in loco, if it were possible, would allow great savings. It is necessary to set up "offices", or contact points, in these countries. At the moment there seems to be little possibility of achieving this aim.

With regard to the proposal in the motion of the General Council in Sofia for the establishment of "Radical parliamentary co-ordination centres", we could and should go beyond the exploratory phase carried out this year and move on to an operative phase (the installation of computers, modems and Agorà), starting with the Azerbaijan Parliament, which has already made a room available.

Initiatives and possible projects

The work on the International Criminal Court is of particular importance here, and meets with strong interest from Caucasian politicians, especially in Azerbaijan and Georgia. The decision of the OCSE (formerly the CSCE) to send international forces to Nagorny is of great significance, partly because it is the first time that an international force will be present in the territory of the former Soviet Union. It is now necessary to undertake initiatives for the implementation of the decision. With regard to the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty, it is essential to promote a public debate, especially in Georgia, where the issue will be on the agenda as part of the debate on the new constitution.

Finally, we should take action on an issue which concerns all the populations of the Caucasian region: the nuclear power station which the Armenian authorities, in the absence of alternative energy sources, are about to reopen. As well as Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, we must involve politicians and experts from Russia, the Ukraine and Western Europe.

7. THE EURASIAN COUNTRIES

(Kazakhstan, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan)

The Radical Party has never had a large number of members in this area. Since 1992 membership numbers have remained constant. Last year, however, for the first time, there was considerable support for the campaign for the International Criminal Court from a fair number of Kazakh deputies and from Mrs Otunbaeva, the Kirghiz Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The region has been thrown into turmoil by the civil war in Tadzhikistan and by the activities in Northern Kazakhstan of Russian separatist movements, who are calling for this part of the country to to reunited with Russia. These movements have been supported by the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

If the party's financial situation improves, it would be a good idea to invest energy and resources in this region. We have learnt, here too, that the co-ordination of activities from Moscow does not allow us to make inroads in such far-off and different places.

8. THE COUNTRIES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

The situation of the party in these countries is absolutely contradictory. From 1979, when the first European elections brought three Radical deputies to Brussels, the party's "non-Italian" activity was concentrated on Western Europe, and in particular Belgium, France and Spain. For the first three or four years after the proposal in 1985 to turn the party into a transnational force, it was from Brussels that we organized mobilization and membership campaigns which achieved considerable success in those countries, and especially in Portugal. However, despite the fact that at times there was considerable interest from the press in a number of countries, particularly in Spain, and despite the fact that party activists settled in a number of important cities, the party never took off in the way that would have been necessary, for both financial and political reasons. The "deafness" of politicians in Western Europe, which we see continually at institutional level, leads to a lack of interest in transnational pol

icies and produces devastating examples of isolationism, both political and cultural.

At the Budapest Congress, we therefore decided to turn our attention to the East, maintaining a Co-ordination Centre at the offices in the European Parliament in Brussels (working, what's more, in difficult conditions due to the division of Radical deputies into two distinct political groups in the 1989-94 legislature, the first for which the Radical Party had not run as such in the election). The Centre was able, however, to provide valid technical and operative support during the phase when the party was run by the "quadrumvirate". The situation then changed considerably with the party's return to full operations, with the decision in Sofia to "open up" the Western front, and with the installation of the President of the General Council of the Radical Party in Brussels: this brought about the reinforcement of the party, although limited, thanks to the use of the technical resources available to Radical Euro-deputies.

We were thus able to improve the research and management of address lists for a number of EU countries (Benelux, France, Germany and Portugal), which made it possible for the Brussels office to look after the production, printing and distribution of the "Transnational" newsletter. A similar structure has also been set up in Madrid to ensure similar services in Spain. Using these technical and organizational data, we have established contacts and gathered signatures, in particular on the party's campaigns.

Abolition of the death penalty

A large number of signatures were gathered on the appeal for the moratorium. In Belgium, on the initiative of the Green deputy Henri Simon, a group of parliamentarians presented a motion calling on Belgium to support the inclusion of the issue on the agenda of the General Assembly of the United Nations. In Spain a number of deputies expressed their support, and Senator Bolinaga presented a proposal to cancel the death penalty from the Military Code which was approved in both houses.

In Brussels, the founding Congress of the International League for the abolition of the death penalty was held in December 1993.

A number of mayors gave their support to the Easter March of 1994, especially in Spain: the mayors of Zaragoza, Valencia and Gernika took part personally.

Ad hoc Tribunal

The Brussels office collected around 100 signatures from parliamentarians in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Great Britain, Eire, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden. Motions were presented by the Belgian Liberal deputy Jean-Pierre De Clippele and the Belgian senator Paul-Joseph Benker, of the Green Party, while parliamentary questions were asked by the Irish M.P. Nora Owen, the Swiss deputy Bernard Comby, the Portuguese senator Teresa Santa Clara Gomes and the British parliamentarians Lord Hilton and William Powell. In Spain, six activists conducted a hunger strike which lasted several days, while around 50 leading figures signed an appeal. Pilar Rahola, a deputy in the "Esquera Republicana de Catalunya" party, presented a motion to the Spanish Parliament: the motion was subsequently approved.

In March of 1994, while dozens of Radicals were on hunger strike, many of the signees sent faxes to the Sixth Commission of the United Nations.

May 1994 saw the start of a major information campaign followed by the mobilization of parliamentarians. In the November session, the European Parliament approved by a vast majority a motion for the convocation in 1995 of the conference for the institution of the tribunal.

Anti-prohibitionism

A Radical anti-prohibitionist association, by establishing contact with well-known figures and intellectuals, helped to re-open the debate on legalization in Spain. El Pais published an article by the deputy Luis Yanez Barnuevo, who had just taken part in the conference on the denouncement of the UN conventions. It was the first time that a leading member of the PSOE had publicly expressed support for anti-prohibitionism.

In Portugal, two members of the Radical Party, Luis Mendao and Luis Andrade, together with the Socialist deputies Enrico Figuereido and Joao De Menezes Fereira, created an anti-prohibitionist association (SOMA) in the spring of 1994.

The study on the denouncement of the UN conventions was distributed to over 1,000 European parliamentarians (as well as parliamentarians in North and South America), and the members of the Justice and Health Committees in the various parliaments. With very few exceptions, even in Spain and Portugal the vast majority of parliamentarians are still not ready to come out in support of the legalization and regulation of drugs.

The Bosnia question

Several documents have been presented to the European Parliament on the question of Bosnia, all of them rejected. The latest example, an emendment presented by Marco Pannella last December, stated that "the European Parliament will not ratify any political agreement - by whomsoever it is sponsored - based on the division of the internationally recognized Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina, and thus on the recognition of the results of ethnic cleansing". The emendment was turned down by 198 votes to 198 thanks, once again, to the Socialist group.

In Spain an article by Rosa Montero was published, defending the initiative of Spanish Radicals who were collecting signatures against the division of Sarajevo. After the publication of the article, over 6,000 signatures were sent to the Radical Party office in Madrid.

Federalism

In parallel with the resumption of relations with the European Federalists through participation in meetings and conferences (the seminar in Ventotene in September 1994, the Congress of the European Federalist Union in Bocholt, Germany, in November 1994, etc.), Conference and Archive facilities on the issue of federalism were set up on the Agorà network as a "meeting point" for the relaunch of the federal integration of Europe. The network services are a valid means of information and dialogue, especially in view of the inter-governmental conference in 1996 on the revision of the Treaties of the European Union, beginning with the publication in August 1994 of the document of the German CDU-CU parliamentary group.

It must not be forgotten, finally, that the last European Parliament elections opened up significant prospects for the establishment of a Radical parliamentray group, in particular with the thirteen deputies elected on the list of the Mouvement des Radicaux des Gauches - subsequently called "Radical" - led by Bernard Tapie and Jean François Hory, Vice President of the Assembly of Radical Parliamentarians.

The existence of this group, led by the former Secretary General of the Council of Europe Catherine Lalumière, will allow us to take full advantage of the facilities and opportunities offered by the European Parliament, which was hampered in the past by the division of Radical parliamenarians into different groups. This report is not the place to deal more fully with this question, which in many ways is fundamental with respect to the decisions that this Congress is called on to make.

Mass media

With very few exceptions, the mass media in the countries of the EU have never covered the initiatives of the Radical Party. At best - for example on the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty - there have been brief reports on events, though without mention of the fact that the Radical Party was behind them. One exception is Portugal, where a number of newspapers have reported on the initiatives of the Radical Party and the IAL for the denouncement of the international conventions. A significant article also appeared in El Pais in December 1994, reporting on the campaign by Spanish Radicals for the appeal on Sarajevo.

9. NEW YORK, THE UN, THE UNITED STATES

The Sofia motion proposed political campaigns which went beyond a one-year term and beyond the confines of Europe; the realization of new international law became the common factor of Radical battles and ideas, while the General Assembly of the United Nations became the necessary stage on which our proposals were to be pursued.

For this reason, it was necessary in some way to establish our presence in New York. At first little more than an "antenna", and later a greater commitment with an office for the co-ordination of initiatives. The office was initially inadequate in terms of size of experience, and there were doubts about our ability to extend the work of the Party to the UN and - we began to think - to the USA.

After my meeting with Boutros Ghali, the office was opened in September opposite the United Nations: its first tasks were to work on the publication of publicity insertions in the New York Times, and to provide support for our activity in the UN on the motions on the death penalty and the International Court.

We were thus able to publish the two-page "May Day, May Day America!" insertion. Several hundred Americans wrote for information, and some sent financial contributions (including a few large sums), and a number of people joined the party. A further two full-page insertions were taken out in the following months: at the end of October, with the appeal for the creation of the permanent Court, and in November, with the appeal for the moratorium on executions. The results were more or less the same as with the first insertion.

These insertions only reached about one million people, a considerable number, yet still insufficient in a country such as the US. However, beyond the undoubted prestige of the New York Times, the insertions also led to interest from decisive quarters and inspired a number of articles in other newspapers and coverage on radio and TV (although not nearly to the extent we may have hoped for), allowing us to introduce the party into a world which is entirely different to the European stage. Insertions were, and still are, an excellent passport to introduce ideas and initiatives in America. Above all, however, they were an effective means of putting pressure on the UN and on the diplomatic missions.

Our office in New York assumed a stable character in the spring of 1994, and its first task (as I have outlined above) was to keep a close check on the proceedings of the VI Commission as it discussed the issue of the budget for the ad hoc Tribunal.

Contact with the world of american politics

In the following months we began for the first time to establish contacts with American politics and society. The first mailing initiatives involved the "Transnational" newsletter and the development of an adequate mailing list. We began to establish relations with NGOs present at the UN, and to organize meetings with political parties and civil rights associations. These were inevitably difficult steps; it was not easy to emerge from the isolation caused by our recent arrival on the scene, by the very different nature of the American political world and the very different political language. Even the different significance of the political term "radical", and the formal and semantic differences of the term "party" in the two political and cultural worlds, represented a considerable obstacle.

United Nations recognition of the Radical Party

In May we initiated the complicated procedures regarding our application for recognition by the United Nations in the ambit of ECOSOC, as an International Organization. We applied for the highest status, which would allow us to put forward proposals, although in a very restricted manner. The examination of the application was first set for February, and then put back to May 1995. We are, therefore, almost there. In the last few months we have been lobbying continuously, although the Commission on applications for UN recogntion is not in session, in order to overcome a number of legal difficulties regarding the details of our constitution, and the opposition within the Commission of countries like China and Cuba.

Development and Third World aid

The party gained useful and important attention as a result of my presence among the Expert Witnesses on development and aid for the Third World called by the United Nations in June. I was able to meet American and international politicians and explain our point of view on issues that we were working on in the 1980s with the campaign against famine in the world.

The Radical criticism of the logic of bilateral aid and our proposal for a multilateral approach to the problem met with consensus and interest from the African representatives, and led to a heated debate with the French Ambassador, whose views were in line with the traditional thinking based on colonial values. Many people expressed the wish that the Radical Party might resume its work on the issue of development.

Human rights in Cuba

Our participation in the Conference on Cuba, the Caribbean and Latin America, held in Miami in July, and the sinking by the Cuban navy of a tug carrying people fleeing from the country, re-opened the problem of human rights in Cuba. Demonstrations for the release of Francisco Chiavano, the President of the Committee for Human Rights in Cuba and a member of the Radical Party, were organized all over Europe.

From Miami we relaunched appeals for liberty in Cuba, and in September the European Parliament narrowly turned down a motion presented by Radical deputies critizing the Castro regime.

In the meantime, the number of Cuban members of the party had reached 45. In the United States a number of exiles joined the party to underline its commitment to human rights in Cuba.

Abolition of the death penalty

Immediately after the UN vote, the party started its campaign against the restoration of the death penalty in the State of New York. Without too much optimism, however, since the new Governor Pataki has a strong majority behind him, and is determined to carry through the decision. We are now fully part of the campaign, and have taken part in the organization of initiatives with Demi McGuire of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, Linda Thurston and Enid Harlow of Amnesty International USA, Norman Siegel of ACLU, Ron Taback of New York Lawyers Against the Death Penalty, Kika Matos of the NAACP, and Judith Malina and Living Theater, who have organized several events in Times Square over the last few months. We have been invited to help with the organization of a major demonstration in New York on 4 June, and a Pan-American Conference against the death penalty in August.

One possibility which would help to bring attention to the campaign, if we can manage to organize it, is an International Conference sponsored by Hands Off Cain and the Radical Party to be held in the autumn, to coincide with the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations, with the participation of hundreds of American anti-death penalty associations and leading politicians.

On the other hand, there seems to be little chance of presenting another motion on the moratorium in the autumn session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The divisions created by the vote in November need time to heal. As things stand, it does not seem to be possible to gather the support of a sufficient number of countries; moreover, we no longer have the commitment of the Italian government, although this may now not be of great significance. We are, however, beginning to think about the possibility of a major initiative to coincide with the UN session of 1996, starting out from a campaign calling on the European Union to present a new motion. If we were successful, the chances of gathering the necessary votes would increase and, since we would have more time, it would also be possible to put pressure on the African countries and on those countries which are undecided.

International Court

Sponsored by the World Federalist Movement, the WFA, the ICC Project, Amnesty International, the Radical Party and There is No Peace Without Justice, a first Conference in support of the International Tribunal was held in New York with the participation of over 25 American and international NGOs. The following organizations attended the conference: the International Commission of Jurists, the International Commission of Jurists - American Committee, the International Human Rights Law Group, the International League for Human Rights, Parliamentarians for Global Action, the Quaker UN office, the United Nations Association, the War and Peace Foundation, the World Order Model Project, the Institute for Global Policy, the Humans Rights Watch, the Global Policy Forum, B'nai B'rith Int'l and Coordinating Board of Jewish Organizations, the Baha'i International Community, CURE, the DePaul Institute for Human Rights, Equality Now, the Carter Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Several members of the American Bar Found

ation and the ASIL took part in a personal capacity.

The Conference decided to create a "Coalition for an International Criminal Court" based on the NGOs present, in order to co-ordinate the necessary initiatives, in particular to ask to be allowed to participate in the proceedings of the ad hoc Committee, and to create a Committee of NGOs to follow the proceedings of the V Committee and the ACABQ Commission of the UN. We attempted to persuade governments to send their opinion on the draft statute drawn up by the ILC by 15 March 1995, lobbying those governments which are either not in favour or undecided. Six working groups were set up.

SAVE TIBET campaign

In view of the march from Dehli to Lhasa, organized by the organizations of Tibetan exiles for 10 March, we have contacted the American Tibet Office, the US-Tibet Committee and the International Campaign for Tibet. Together we have drawn up a draft project for initiatives on the occasion of the September session of the UN, and above all for the International Campaign for the nonviolent Satyagraha of 1996.

Anti-prohibitionist campaign on drugs

The American government has cut funding on the war on drugs, and has thus more or less declared its failure. But this "non-position", or rather this avoidance of the situation, actually undermines the efforts of the anti-prohibitionists to raise the question. The activity of the New York office on this issue has never taken off. Attempts to raise funds for a Conference in Eastern Europe were not successful. The project to fund the publication of the IAL Annual Report also fell through, and relations with the American Drug Foundation and its President Arnold Trebach have become cooler.

Political contacts and the construction of the Party

Contacts have been made with the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Liberal Party of New York State, the Independence Party and the Independent Fusion Party, which are related to the United We Stand organization of former presidential candidate Ross Perot. Among the Democrats, relations have only developed with Mario Cuomo, Senator Moyihan and Senator Tom Hayden of California. Excellent relations have been established with the Liberal Party of New York and with one of its leaders, Russ Hemingway.

Relations with independent politicians, on the other hand, have been growing: above all with Lenora B. Fulani, one of the leaders of the black community in America and a former presidential candidate. There is also a good chance of useful collaboration with the National American Italian Foundation (NAIF), thanks partly to the enrolment of a Radical representative in the "Consiglio dei Mille" and our excellent relations with the President of the organization, the former Congressman Frank Guarini. On the whole, however, the outlook is not bright, with the exception of the independent politicians. I am sure, though, that the publication of a few issues of the newspaper for mailing to parliamentarians, a constant presence in Washington and contact with the lobbies in the American Congress, would help enormously and allow us to develop political partnerships in the USA.

The same is true of New York, with all its points of interest and with all its problems, which are more or less those which we meet in any other situation. A more general analysis of the political significance of the "American" initiative will be found in other parts of this report.

Appendices

APPENDIX Ia

THE AD HOC TRIBUNAL

Characteristics:

a) The Tribunal was established directed by the Security Council, which avoided the long and uncertain process of an international agreement or treaty by acting on the basis of Chap. VII of the United Nations Charter, which regards the initiatives of the Security Council related to peace, the violation of peace, and acts of aggression. By applying the provisions contained in Chap. VII, the Security Council was able to establish the Tribunal as "a subsidiary organ necessary for the fulfilment of its duties" (art. 29 of the United Nations Charter);

b) the Statute was drawn up by a Commission, on the basis of the three projects drawn up by the governments of France, Italy and Sweden (the latter on behalf of the CSCE); other countries, NGOs, and experts sent their suggestions and observations;

c) the Tribunal is the only act of "structural" importance and breadth that the international community, for a long time accused of being unable to deal with the problems of our times, has managed to achieve since the end of the Cold War;

d) for the identification of crimes and criminals, the Tribunal will make use of the "written" international law represented by the Conventions on humanitarian law and the Conventions on human rights (the two general treaties of 1966, concerning civil and political rights, and economic, social and cultural rights respectively, and the 1990 Convention on the rights of children);

e) the Statute expressly lays down that procedures can also be initiated on the basis of information from the various NGOs, as laid down by section 5 of Res. 827 of 25 May 1993, in which the Security Council decided for the creation of the Tribunal and approved its Statute; according to this provision, ordinary citizens are also called on to collaborate with the Tribunal by providing information, economic help, and expertise;

f) on the basis of the principle of concurrent jursidiction, laid down in art. 9 of the Statute, national courts are also held to exercise the right/duty to try war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the former Yugoslavia, when they are called on to do so. The Tribunal therefore shares its jurisdiction with national courts, although from a position of supremacy. National courts can try those accused of war crimes or acts of genocide or crimes against humanity, but the International Tribunal can at any stage formally summon the proceedings. What's more, since its jurisdiction is concurrent with that of national courts, the International Tribunal can summon trials in cases in which national courts have failed to take action. The Statute gives no explicit indication of the cases in which the International Tribunal can intervene to apply for the transfer of proceedings. One exception to the principle of "ne bis in idem" is provided for: the International Tribunal can call for trial a person who has

already been sentenced by a national court when the crime has been classified in a less serious manner (e.g. as a "common crime") or when the sentence has not been impartial and independent or has been aimed at sparing the defendant from his penal responsibilities for crimes recognized by international laws; or, finally, in the event that the trial has not been prepared diligently. The principle of "concurrent jurisdiction" is not limited to relations with the courts of the states that were formerly part of Yugoslavia, but applies to relations with the national jurisdictions of all the member states of the United Nations;

g) penalties are imposed by the Tribunal on the basis of the Penal Code in force in the Yugoslavian Federation before dismemberment, although the death penalty is excluded a priori; thus only prison sentences can be imposed, to be served in the prisons of states willing to accept those found guilty. As a safegaurd of the rights and the guarantees of defence, trial by default is not permitted.

Competence

a) serious violations of the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war, the wounded and civilians involved in acts of war (voluntary homicide, torture, or other forms of cruel treatment such as bio-medical experiments, the widespread destruction or appropriation of property, the deportation, transfer, or illegal detention of civilians, or the capture of civilians as hostages);

b) violations of the laws or rules of war (including the use of chemical weapons or weapons which cause unnecessary suffering, the bombing of or attacks on undefended cities, villages or buildings, the destruction of places of worship, schools, or the artistic and cultural heritage);

c) genocide;

d) crimes against humanity committed against the civilian population: homicide, extermination, slavery, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape, persecution for political, religious or racial reasons, or other acts contrary to the sense of humanity.

For the gathering of documents and other evidence, a particularly important role will be played by observation missions sent by the United Nations or by other specialized international organs.

As we have already stated, NGOs will also be called on to collaborate: in particular, use will be made of the enormous computer data-base created by the De Paul University of Chicago, which is already collaborating with the UN Commission on war crimes (chaired by the Egyptian Cherif Bassiouni).

Many states have accepted the invitation by the United Nations to collaborate with the Tribunal, issuing the laws necessary to regulate relations between their own courts and the Tribunal in the Hague and giving the police the powers to carry out the orders of the international Tribunal. Some countries have issued laws which regulate this collaboration and the ways in which the civilian population can provide a useful contribution: for example, by reporting crimes over which the Tribunal can exercise its responsibilities, and by assuring that they will hand over defendants to the international authorities.

The Italian Parliament, in particular, defined the areas of competence relating to the collaboration procedures in law no. 120 of 14 February 1994. Italy has also stated its willingness to allow its prisons to be used for those found guilty: article 7, section 4 of the law in question states that the term of imprisonment cannot exceed thirty years.

Problems still to be solved

On 14 November 1994, the President of the ad hoc Tribunal, Antonio Cassese, told the General Assembly of the United Nations that the Tribunal must have a regular budget, provided from the ordinary budget of the United Nations and generous enough to meet the running costs of a criminal court operating at international level: "The fact that there was no regular budget for months after the establishment of the tribunal," he said, "prevented us from building a courtroom; it was only possible to have the use of one courtroom, and not the three which are necessary, 12 months after the installation of the Tribunal. The same thing happened with the special unit to accomodate defendants, under the control of the authorities in the Hague; this was only completed 11 months after the establishment of the court."

Another two obstacles were the temporary lack of a Public Prosecutor (the statute states that no trial can by initiated before an indictment is issued by the Public Prosecutor) and the lack of staff in the office of the Prosecutor - 20 people to conduct investigations into all the crimes under the jurisdiction of the Tribunal.

Despite these obstacles, as Cassese pointed out, the magistrates of the Tribunal have undertaken all the initiatives within their sphere of competence, laying down the foundations for the commencement of penal actions and drawing up a mini-code comprising Rules of Procedure and Evidence, Rules of Detention, and a Directive on the granting of legal aid to defendants. These rules have no precedents in the international community. They were naturally drawn up on the basis of the rules adopted by the United Nations on the subject of the application of human rights.

The following example serves as an illustration: last October, the Procurator's office applied to summon a case pending before the judicial authorities of Germany, a case which involved charges of genocide, ethnic cleansing, torture, rape, and the murder of civilians and prisoners of war. In November, in the newly-opened headquarters in the Hague, a public hearing was held to consider the application, despite the stance taken by the German government and the statements of the defence lawyer, who was allowed to appear as "amicus curiae". The Tribunal accepted the Prosecutor's line of argument, and therefore asked the Geramn government to remit the case to the international Tribunal itself. This case, and the public hearing, brought the international Tribunal into the view of international public opinion for the first time; it not only marked the initiation of the Tribunal, but also reduced the scepticism expressed about it. The ice has now been broken: from March, the Tribunal will be in permanent session.

APPENDIX IIa

The reasons for an International Criminal Court

The idea of establishing an International Criminal Court was first outlined in 1899. And with the gradual affirmation of the principle of a ban on the use of force in international relations, it became clear that war, the extreme means of confrontation between reasons of state, or rather between the egoisms of different peoples, could not constitute an alibi for cruel and inhuman forms of behaviour which are unamimously defined by both conscience and law as "war crimes".

After the First World War, the Versailles Treaty of 1919 declared that the Kaiser and other military officials accused of war crimes should be tried: the trials never took place (fortunately, we might add) because the Allies lacked the political will. The decision to punish those responsible for the genocide of the Armenian people was also not implemented. At the end of the Second World War, the international community demanded a trial against those responsible for the war, for war crimes and for crimes against humanity. The contradictory events of Nuremburg and Tokyo were, however, isolated. However, with the outbreak of further wars, the opportunity for the development of more unacceptable international and transnational crimes has increased. During conflicts of all kinds, the number of victims of serious and unacceptable violations of the most basic human rights has continued to grow: we need only recall that the regime of the Khymer Rouge caused two million victims in Cambodia, while the war of independe

nce in Bangladesh led to the death of over one million people.

With the birth of the United Nations system, the idea of a jurisdiction for violence perpetrated with aggression, and with threats to security and peace, began to take shape; at the same time there was a development in the juridical definition of genocide and other crimes against humanity (acts of air and sea piracy, apartheid, crimes against diplomats, the taking of hostages).

Many other individual behaviours have now acquired a negative connotation in the collective conscience, and appear to deserve sanctions imposed by means of international procedures and an international Court: against international organized crime, drug-trafficking, the international traffic of minors and other criminal activities which, in the internationalization of relations and of the economy, have acquired a predominantly transnational nature, escaping from the powers and the strength of national jurisdictions: and also against international terrorism in all its tragic manifestations, the recourse to an International Criminal Court could give credit to the existence of an international society founded on justice and not only on the exercise of force.

Background and recent developments

In 1989, following a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations, the International Law Commission drew up the framework of reference for the constitution of an "international Tribunal on crimes, or another international juridical mechanism".

The 45th and 46th sessions of the General Assembly (1190 and 1991) passed resolutions which merely reiterated the mandate to the ILC. A number of Western countries, particularly the United States, Great Britain and France, tried to stall the process.

In 1992, as a result of events in the former Yugoslavia and the controversies over extradictions from the Lebanon, many countries adopted a position in favour of the constitution of the Criminal Court (among them were Australia, Canada, Colombia, Japan, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and - unexpectedly - the European Community as a whole, therefore including Great Britain and France). The ILC asked the United Nations for a mandate to draw up a more detailed project, a fully-fledged draft statute. Despite initial resistence from the United States and the scepticism of China, Indonesia, and other developing countries, in November 1992 the General Assembly invited the ILC to draw up a draft statute to be submitted to the following session.

According to the draft drawn up by the ILC, the Court was to have jurisdiction over crimes of genocide (on this point, see the 1948 Convention on genocide) and aggression, and over war crimes and crimes against humanity. These are the international crimes for which there is wide international consensus regarding sanctions, also in the form of recognized international customs. As for other crimes covered by international agreements, article 21 and the enclosure of the ILC Draft state that the Court only has jurisdiction in cases of exceptional gravity. This concerns violations of the Geneva Convention of 1949 and the relative protocol, the Conventions of the Hague and Montreal on air piracy, the Convention on apartheid, the Convention for the protection of diplomats, the Convention on hostages, the Convention on torture, the Convention on sea piracy, and the Convention on drug-trafficking.

According to the Draft Statute, acceptance of the jurisdiction of the Court can take place through declarations made by States either at the conclusion of the Treaty of Institution (or subsequently) or, in relation to a single case or a single crime, by a State which has not recognized the Court (see article 22). It is laid down that in the case of genocide the requset must be made by a member state of the 1948 Convention (article 25.1); in other cases the request can be made by any of the states that have signed the Treaty of Institution (article 25.2). The court action can go ahead only if the state in which the suspect is imprisoned or the state in which the crime was committed have issued a declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the Court for the crime in question (article 21.1(b)). These rules are what the Draft defines as "conditions for the acceptance of the jurisdiction of the Court on the part of states" (article 21, which also refers to articles 20, 22 and 25); by increasing the possibility of s

upport from states, they widen the jurisdiction of the Court and make it more flexible.

The Draft sets out reasonable criteria for the determination of penalties. The death penalty being excluded (article 47.1(a)), penalties will be established on the basis of the sanctions laid down by the laws of the state of the defendant; of the state in which the crime was committed; or of the state in which the defendant was detained (article 47.2 (a) (b) (c)). Defendants may appeal against the sentences of the Court.

APPENDIX IIIa

THE AUXILIARY LANGUAGE

The situation in Italy

The final Report of the Ministry of Education Committee on Esperanto, which we worked for and obtained through the constitution of the Cross-Party Federalist Group on Language co-ordinated by Elio Vito, allowed the authorization and the launch of the first project for the experimentation of the teaching of Esperanto in schools. We must now work to ensure that the other proposals made by the Commission are implemented. Since the latest reforms make the study of a second foreign language obligatory in secondary schools, we must set up an appeal and other suitable initiatives to ensure that pupils are really given the opportunity to choose to communicate transnationally through a non-ethnic language.

The educational institutions, and the government itself, could initiate consultations and experiemnts with Hungary, where Esperanto has been taught at all levels since the 1950s, in order to reach a bilateral pact stating that diplomatic relations between the two countries will be conducted in Esperanto.

Notes

Note 1. Demonstrations held in Russia in the last 18 months

- 27 May 1994, outside the Armenian Embassy in Moscow, for the cancellation of the death penalty received by Yuri Belechenko, the Azerbaijan military pilot charged with war crimes in the self-proclaimed "Republic of Nagorny Karabach", with banners in support of the International Criminal Court for war crimes, and against the death penalty;

- outside the Cuban Embassy in Moscow, for democracy in Cuba and for the release of political prisoners, held at the same time as similar demonstrations in various European capitals;

- 7 August, St. Petersburg, on the occasion of the last day of the 1994 Goodwill Games: during the match between Russia and the Rest of the World, and then during the closing ceremony, 5 members of the Radical Party unfolded a banner proclaiming "There is No Peace Without Justice: International Criminal Court - Now!";

- outside the American Embassy in Moscow, against the US position on the International Criminal Court in the Sixth Commission of the General Assembly of the United Nations;

- participation in the rally organized by the parliamentary group "Russia's Choice" in Teatraljnaja Square, Moscow, against the war in Chechnya;

- symbolic deposition on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier of a banner with the words "To all the victims of Stalin's militarism in Grachev"; this action was particularly important because it marked the beginning of a new stage in the Radical Party's campaign against militarism.

Note 2. Public assemblies held in Russia

- 15 January 1994, Moscow (Hotel Moskva), attended by around 100 people;

- 12-13 May, St. Petersburg, together with a debate on the drugs problem, attended by officers from the St. Petersburg Police Force, and groups from the health and drug addiction service;

- 8-9 July, Moscow, extended meeting of members of the General Council from the countries of the CIS and the Baltic, attended by around 100 militants, parliamentarians, and members of the General Council from almost all the countries of the CIS and the Baltic.

Andrea Tamburi took part in the first assembly, and Antonio Stango in the second and third, as co-ordinators of the party's activities. The last assembly was also attended by the party Treasurer, Ottavio Lavaggi, and the President of the Federal Council, Olivier Dupuis.

Note 3. Radical demonstrations held in the Ukraine

18 and 19 September 1993, in the main square in Kiev, mobilization for the Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, at the same time as other similar demonstrations in other European capitals. 743 signatures were gathered, not only from citizens of the Ukraine, but also from South Korea, Nigeria, Russia, Iran, the United States, Germany, Poland, Nepal, Pakistan, Latvia, Moldavia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Croatia and Estonia. It was also a useful opportunity to establish relations with the UN mission in the Ukraine.

27 September 1993. A Radical delegation took part in the symposium on "Security, Disarmament and Co-operation" sponsored by the UN office in the Ukraine. In the entrance hall of the Rus Hotel, where the symposium was held, Radical activists set up a stall with documents, and collected signatures from participants on the appeal to the United Nations for the immediate installation of the ad hoc Tribunal.

16 November 1993, in Kiev, press conference on the inauguration of the ad hoc Tribunal. All the press agencies, the main newspapers and two TV networks covered the event.

3 April 1994. Radical activists from Dneprodzerzhinsk (in the Dnepropetrovsk region in Eastern Ukraine) organized an Easter Vigil against the death penalty, under the "Hands Off Cain" banner, right outside the city's Polish Catholic Church.

9 May 1994, in Kiev, with banners reading "There is No Peace Without Justice", "Permanent Tribuanl on war crimes - Now!", and "Free Bosnia". The banners, together with the party's Gandhi symbol, were seen by thousands of people who had come that morning to the city's main street, Kreschatik, to watch the parade of the military orchestra on Liberation Day, one of the main holidays in all the countries of the former Soviet Union.

27 May 1994, members of the party presented representatives of the Armenian Republic in Kiev with an appeal against the death penalty awarded to Yuri Belechenko, the Azerbaijan military pilot shot down over Nagorny Karabach, and for the establishment of the permanent International Criminal Court.

26 July 1994, demonstration by Radicals from Kiev outside the Cuban Embassy, for democracy in Cuba and against political repression under Castro's regime. The initiative was conducted at the same time in other cities around Europe.

A note on the Danube question by Paolo Pietrosanti, member of the General Council

In the very countries of Central and Eastern Europe whose prisons had played host to dozens of Radical militants over two decades of nonviolent action and struggle, the Radicals had already stated the urgent need for them to join the European Community at the Budapest Congress, as the new democracies were being established in the months leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not only due to the need for the proposal of a sort of Marshall Plan, but also to the need for changes in the European Community of the time, and of the European Union of today, in the direction of federalism, a process which will not get under way unless the decision-making institutions become common to all.

At a time when the institutions of the European Union have to attempt, partly in view of the revision of the Treaties in 1996, to assume a form which has found its highest expression in the course of history within the member countries themselves, we must ask ourselves whether the Radical Party is not called on to organize a major campaign for the rapid, progressive transformation of the institutions of the EU, in a democratic direction, in parallel with its expansion.

We must ask ourselves, at this Congress, whether we should not put ourselves forward as the political instrument of the will of the citizens of Europe to obtain an institution for common political decisions, juridically binding for all members.

We must ask ourselves whether it is not necessary to make the Radical Party the pivot of the great campaign for the expansion and the transformation of the EU and its institutions. We must ask ourselves whether we should not commit ourselves to an intense and long-term political campaign for justice, which is nothing if not institutions and powers and authorities which uphold justice in Europe; just as we have done, and will continue to do, on the issue in New York, at the United Nations, on the issue of the Criminal Court and the moratorium. We must ask ourselves if the Radical Party should not begin immediately on the preparation and the study of this campaign for the expansion of the European Union, to be submitted to the first General Council of the party for elaboration into a fully-fledged working project.

We must ask orselves whether we should not draw up a great manifesto, a great European appeal for a new conception of the European institutions, more suited to the needs of our times.

We must ask ourselves whether, around this manifesto-appeal, we should not plan the great campaign which unites the two Europes in the common desire for rules and institutions, which addresses the governments of Western Europe and those of the less highly developed Europe, as well as individuals and organizations who want to work to give Europe political and institutional forms that are suited to a destiny which is only different because of forms of resistance which relegate politics, and democracy, to an increasingly marginal role.

We must ask ourselves whether it is not necessary to revive and organize the great and widespread desire for autonomy, for local decision-making powers, which can only stem from the expansion of the EU in parallel with its transformation in a federal direction.

We must ask ourselves whether we do not owe it to the Danube, to the great river which is part of the culture and the history of the whole planet, to ensure that it is administrated and enjoyed together by all the peoples of Europe, by means of great new democratic institutions.

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Part two

REFORM OF THE MAASTRICHT TREATY, NEW ORGANIZATION OF EUROPE:

THE CHALLENGES FOR THE RADICAL PARTY

drafted by Olivier Dupuis and Gianfranco Dell'Alba

In view of the intergovernmental conference of 1996 for the reform of the Treaty of European Union, various political and institutional bodies and lobbies are putting together a whole series of proposals aimed at the reform - or the counter-reform - of the European institutions.

Giscard d'Estaing, for example, proposes that the relaunch of the process of integration should be centred around the realization of monetary union. This Europe, which he has called "the European power", would be open immediately to those who can and subsequently to those who wish to take part (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg plus Italy, Spain, and one or other of the new members). This vision is opposed to "the European area", open to the whole continent but essentially reduced to an area of free exchange.

Giscard d'Estaing's vision takes for granted the idea of a hard core, that is the possibility for a number of countries to go ahead without being blocked by "recalcitrant" countries or by those who do not want to move ahead. It does have a serious limitation: the fact that it is based on a prevalently "inter-governmental" structure (contrary to what we are led to believe by the title: "a manifesto for a new federative Europe"). In fact he proposes organizing this "federative Europe" around a Council of Ministers of the Monetary Union, a Political Council of the Monetary Union composed of the heads of government and a Parliamentary Commission of members of the national parliaments.

Alain Juppé and Klaus Kinkel, the Foreign Ministers of France and Germany respectively, mention numerous initiatives, both present and future, in favour of European integration, but fail to point out that most of them are taking place outside the institutional framework of the European Union!

The free circulation of persons, in fact, although it is inscribed in the EEC Treaty, is based on a multilateral and inter-governmental agreement (Schengen) conceived to be integrated into the III pillar of the Treaty on European Union, itself an inter-governmental agreement; Eurocorps is based on an agreement between France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and Luxembourg; the co-ordination of navies is an agreement between France, Italy and Spain; the armament agency is a Franco-German agreement; the co-ordination of air forces is an Anglo-French agreement, etc.

What's more, all these projects are centred around France, a fact which geographical criteria alone fail to explain.

This "panoramic" survey allows the two ministers to avoid facing up to a central problem, the governability of the Union, which they only mention in passing in the following statement: "The European Union is one of the most important foundations of the new order of security in Europe. It can only assume this mission if the powers of decision of its institutions is maintained and expanded."

An issue which the CDU-CSU parliamentary group raised inequivocally in a document published last September caused a considerable stir; the document states that no "powers of decision", no democracy, no transparency... is possible "without a federal reform of Europe. The reforms must tend towards a new conception of the decision-making processes of the institutions, gradually turning the Parliament into a legislative organ with equal status to the Council; the latter, together with duties of an essentially inter-governmental nature, must assume the role of a second Chamber, that is a Chamber of States, with the Commission exercizing the duties of a European government."

The German document had the undoubted merit of relaunching the debate on the institutional and political organization of Europe (especially in the countries that are traditionaly more attentive to these issues; the reactions in Italy and Spain, for example, centred almost exclusively on the question of possible exclusion from the so-called "hard core"), above all on what is perhaps the most delicate point: the federal model of European integration. With few exceptions and without being able to use the British alibi, in fact, all the member states are forced, when it comes to the crunch, to admit a common stance with regard to the need to continue to subordinate the construction of Europe to national interests, demonstrating their incapacity and lack of will, or their irreducible opposition to the possibility and the need to uphold a superior, common European interest.

In recent weeks, especially on the part of Great Britain, there has been a re-emergence of the most hard-line positions against the community institutions par excellence, the European Parliament and the Commission, which underline the importance of the process of the revision of the Treaties which is about to begin.

What is at stake is no longer "how much" we will progress together towards greater political integration and greater democracy and participation in the institutions and the decision-making processes, as was the case in 1985 with the Single Act and in 1991 with the Maastricht Treaty, but "if" we will progress, "with whom", and "with what institutions, beginning with a new calling into question of the guiding role of the European Commission and of the representative character of the European Parliament.

Unfortunately, not even the recent statements by Jacques Delors, who in his farewell speech in Strasbourg underlined the need to create a "Federation of national states" and therefore to opt for the federal method, and by François Mitterand himself, can make us forget that the risk of a complete "renationalization" of the European Union is now nearer than ever.

The 1996 conference therefore risks giving birth not so much to a "mini-reform" as to a genuine counter-reform. It is difficult, in fact, to see - as things stand with regard to the mobilization of the citizens of Europe - how Germany, even if joined by an Italy that has returned to its European federalist traditions, can oppose a common "Anglo-French" front strengthened by three years of common "work" in the former Yugoslavia, with all due thanks to Milosevic, Karadgic and Mladic...

The transnational and transdivisional Radical Party can and must raise its banners, the values that it has always defended since the great campaign for the "United States of Europe" conducted on the basis of the Draft Treaty of Union drawn up by Aldo Spinelli, in support of the European Parliament and of convictions new and old, cornerstones without which the great challenge to build a just, free and democratic Europe, from East to West, risks turning in the opposite direction. Only the large-scale mobilization of politicians, parliamentarians, and European federalist movements on the points which are outlined below can make 1996 the date of a great step forward for the European Union and not of its decline or of the defeat of a project that has always formed the essential basis of European integration.

The inter-governmental Conference of 1996 should develop the following objectives:

1. Expansion of the Union and immediate membership for Bosnia

The question of expansion to the East must, for evident reasons of the security and stability of Europe (as we have learned from the examples of Yugoslavia and Chechnya) and of the consolidation of the new democracies, become a political priority for the Union, with a precise and binding calendar. The expansion must involve, in particular, all the countries of Central and Balkan Europe, with two conditions: that they are founded on political democracy and that they are willing to join a project for the creation of a federal Europe.

One exception must be made to a series of deadlines that goes beyond the 1996 conference: the case of Bosnia Hercegovina. The Union should immediately initiate procedures, with the legitimate authorities of this internationally recognized Republic, for full and complete membership of the European Union as soon as possible. Against the economic arguments, in any case easy to refute, which can be invoked to delay the membership of ex-Communist or "highly unstable" countries, such as Bosnia, the political argument is undoubtedly the main defence: "Europe will either die or be reborn in Sarajevo". Only an initiative of this kind, in fact, articulated into specific mechanisms for the necessary period of transition to the single market, and without calling into question the full membership of Bosnia, would counter the indifference and cynicism that characterize the actions of the Union on the issue, not only with regard to Bosnia, but also to Macedonia, Kossovo, etc.

2. European Constitutional Court

In order to ensure that the extension to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe can take place in a relatively short space of time, it is now necessary to establish the instruments to prevent the entrance of new members from bringing a halt to the functioning of the Union. The current decision-making procedures are already complex, opaque and undemocratic, as well as ineffective: and in this context the entire mechanism could very easily get jammed: the caprices of the British or the Danes, the bad will of the Commission, the resentful feelings of the Italians or the Spanish, or the pressures of domestic politics on a President of the Council, are enough to paralyze the decision-making process for months, or even years. So far obstacles have been avoided by continual compromises, often on the very principles of the constitution, by opt-out clauses, or by exceptions which are gradually and silently leading to a renationalization of community politics, taking advantage of a distorted application of the pr

inciple of subsidiarity. But this is not all: the decision at Maastricht not to give the Union a coherent and unitary institutional structure for all policy sectors, deliberately leaving foreign policy and home affairs to a totally inter-governmental structure, has meant a complete failure of the ambition to give Europe weight and independence on the international stage and to turn it into an area without internal borders for its citizens.

The same error must not be repeated in 1996: among the fundamental issues of the reform (and it is from these crucial choices that it will become clear who wants to be part of a political Union that works) will be the elimination of the "pillar" structure of the Union and the simplification and democratization of the decision-making processes and the legislative texts: in concrete terms, this means that the Council - the only legislative organ in Europe which takes decisions behind closed doors - must no longer be the Union's only centre of legislation and government; that the space occupied by intergovernmental co-operation and unamimous decisions must be greatly reduced and that all the responsibilities of the Union must be brought back into the community system. Moreover, the healthy concept of the separation of powers must finally apply to Europe, too...: the Parliament and the Council must exercise legislative powers in equal measure and the Commission must assume the role of government of the Union, el

iminating the complex system of balances which now influences it and reduces its powers of initiative and operation.

In this framework, the Court of Justice, which has been one of the most important factors in the consolidation of the community system, must assume new responsibilities, no longer restricting itself to controlling the application of community law. In a democratic political Union, with institutions that are separate and independent from those of the member states, in a Union in which laws and decisions have direct effects on the lives and the activities of all those who live and work in its territory, in which the significance of European citizenship must be better defined and extended, the Court of Justice must become a true Constitutional Court, with the task of ensuring that the rights and duties of institutions, citizens, regions and member states are respected, and that the actions taken by the Union do not violate its principal foundations.

3. Uniformity of decision-making procedures and institutions

In line with the previous section, the intergovernmental Conference of 1996 must lead to the "community management" of the second and third pillars of the Union: Foreign Policy and Common Security, and Internal Affairs and Justice.

At the same time, it must approve the suppression of restrictions which hinder the activity of the Commission (so-called "committee-itis"), imposed by the governments of member states to prevent the creation of a true "European government", although limited to those issues which pertain to the community; it must drastically simplify decision-making procedures, decide to make meetings of the Council public when it acts in a legislative role, and reform the hierarchy of community regulations to bring about a rationalization of the operational instruments of the Union.

4. A President for Europe

The lack of effectiveness, visibility and coherence of the Union's ruling body, that is the Council (in particular its Presidency, which rotates every six months) and the Commission, are one of the main reasons for the public's disaffection with the Union, which is seen as a powerful but inaccessible entity, with neither face nor name, lost in the mists of Brussels: if, besides the democratization of the Union and the re-balancing of the powers of the institutions, one of the objectives of the 1996 reform is to give the Union greater visibility and representativity, and greater credibility both within Europe and on the international stage, then it is necessary to pose the question of how to make the link between the peoples of Europe and the government of the Union more evident: a government which may be controlled and democratically responsible, but a government all the same.

On the basis of this principle, a wide debate could be developed on the role of the "President of the Union".

We could consider the idea of a presidency of the Union that corresponds to the executive (that is, to the Commission), elected by universal suffrage: a President who could choose the members of government among candidates presented by national governments and who would be subject to control by the Parliament and the Council, in the framework of the radical democratic reform of the Union outlined above and of a clearer division of powers between states, regions and the Union itself.

We could, on the other hand, consider the idea of a "President of the Union", an autonomous office distinct from the other existing organs, elected by a Congress composed in equal measure by representatives of the national parliaments and by Euro-MPs - or, perhaps at a later stage, by universal suffrage - and entrusted with specific duties such as the "superpartes" presidency of the European Council, the presidency of the activities of the Union on the issue of security, the designation of the candidate for the office of President of the Commission, the appointment of the magistrates for the Court of Justice, and representation of the Union in international affairs.

5. Uniformity of the system of election to the European Parliament

One of the recurrent criticisms of the European Parliament is its lack of representativity, the consequence of the fact that each state has different electoral systems, sometimes complex and radically different from the systems used for election to the national parliaments. All this is highly off-putting for the European citizen. While the Maastricht Treaty exalts the role of "political parties organized at European level", and measures have been adopted to allow candidates to run for election in states other than their own, there is opposition to any attempt to apply a single, uniform electoral system for the European Parliament.

It is therefore essential for the 1996 conference to manage at least to establish a series of deadlines for the decision-making process necessary to ensure that the next European elections are held with a single system, whatever system this may turn out to be. To this end, a debate must be initiated as soon as possible to allow the formation of true "European parties" to take the place of the ritual, and rather futile, cross-party "internationals" which exist at the moment.

6. Linguistic democracy

There are now many people who believe that the major problem of the construction of Europe is the question of communication, both between citizens of Europe and within the institutions. Giscard d'Estaing, for example, has stated that "the negotiators should reconsider the number of languages used in the community affairs" and that "the ability to reform this system, and to reduce the number of working languages to four or five will be the first test of the will for the renewal of community practices". However, when the French minister Lamassoure proposed reducing the number of languages to five (those of the five largest countries: German, French, English, Italian and Spanish), a proposal in any case made informally and later denied, there was a considerable outcry from the other member states.

The question is not, in any way, whether to resume the "search for the perfect language", but to face up to very real problems: the problem of communication and linguistics democracy, not only within the European institutions but also between the citizens of Europe, and the financial and budgetary problem (in financial terms, the translation and interpreting services of a Union which has nine languages represent over 1% of the entire budget).

The first problem is of an institutional nature. According to the principle of subsidiarity, which requires each problem to be dealt with at the level most pertinent to its nature and dimensions, the "education and teaching" sector has remained almost exclusively of national competence (with the exception, for example, of the equivalence of academic qualifications). In 1996, one objective could be to give the European institutions the responsibility for the definition of a European policy of linguistic communication, leaving its implementation to the members states and regions.

The second problem to be faced, much much difficult in political terms, regards the nature of the new European policy. Although current proposals are clearly incapable of providing a convincing response, it has to be admitted that the only alternative proposal, that is the teaching of an "artificial" language in all the education systems of Europe, is largely seen in a negative light (to use a euphemism). The prejudices against the proposal are to some extent caused, willingly or otherwise, by its main supporters - Esperantists - and their Utopian views.

This brings us to the third problem, perhaps the most delicate: that of the role of the artificial language. On this point we must be particularly clear. This language must be a language of communication, thus an auxiliary language; it is not intended to replace national languages or to take the place one of foreign language or another. It is an instrument of communication, a second language, which is common to everyone. Studied by everyone as such, it would create the conditions for equal opportunity in communication (which is very rare when the language used is the mother tongue of one party and a second language for the other). Many studies also show that learning Esperanto makes it easier to go on and learn other languages.

Finally, the extremely logical structure of Esperanto makes it particularly suited to use for juridical purposes. This would avoid divergent interpretations, as is often the case at the moment in the international organizations, which use more than one language for legal purposes (the most famous example is a UN resolution on occupied territories, when the English and French texts gave rise to completely different interpretations).

7. Working towards the 1996 conference

Having thus outlined the Europe which should emerge from the 1996 reform, we cannot conclude without admitting that, as things stand at the moment, there is very little chance that the intergovernmental Conference will end with a unanimous agreement on a strong, federal and democratic Europe. The growing divisions between member states on the future of the Union are ample proof of this fact: what should we do if the Conference threatens to end in stalemate because it is not possible to reach consensus on the reforms?

It is now necessary to consider the problem of the method to adopt for the revision of the Treaty; as the experience of the Single Act and Maastricht has clearly shown, we can no longer leave the destiny of the Union in the hands of a conference attended by diplomats obliged to reach an agreement, very probably a low-profile agreement full of ambiguities and contradictions, as was the case with Maastricht. It is necessary to go beyond the strict juridical framework laid down for the reform by article N of the Maastrict Treaty. Negotiations between the member states must be initiated and conducted on the basis of clear choices. The European Parliament, a democratically elected body, must be allowed to take part, by means of a procedure that we might define as "constitutional co-decision". Finally, the members states are called on to open an immediate debate, in view of an agreement on the most suitable method to prevent the unanimity required by article N from forcing all parties to accept mediocre compromise

s or from leading to deadlock.

Only in this way, with a "political" commitment before the concluding phase of negotiations to follow this path and to submit the outcome to a European referendum, will it be possible to ensure that the European Union belongs to all its citizens, and to ensure that it becomes a project capable of facing the twenty-first century with the strength of reason.

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Part three

Rome, 14 January 1995

Dear comrades,

I am deeply sorry that I have not been able to open the 37th Congress of the Radical Party myself, as I would have liked, and as was my duty. Tomorrow, in fact, I am moving to Brussels to take up the position to which I have been appointed by the Italian government. I therefore send you a warm welcome and best wishes for the work of this Congress, which I have prepared and convened, and which is called on to make fundamental decisions for what is still my party, the transnational and transdivisional Radical Party, the party of hope, not only in Italy, for the growth of justice and nonviolence beyond frontiers and in the heart of the community of peoples.

This report is not complete: it lacks all those parts which should refer to the period between now and the beginning of Congress, that is from 14 January to 7 April. Three months which will bring some developments, but which will not alter the central problems that the party has to face: allow me, therefore, to forget and ignore the three months which divide us, and to address you in the present tense as if I were in front of you reading these words.

This, the 37th Congress, has been convened twice. We decided, in fact, to put it off until 7 April in order to link it to the Easter March on Sunday 9 April. We knew that holding the two events together would create a few extra problems, because we would have to further reduce the time available for the Congress, but we are convinced that the two events, which are both part of the same political project, will be strengthened by being held together. We now have to ensure that this decision is proved right by working for successful results in the Congress and ensuring that the march makes a positive impact on public opinion and in the dialogue with its addressees. The two events should be opportunities for growth.

In the meantime, however, we can open our debate in the knowledge that in the last few years we have achieved a task which I would define, without presumption, and with great pride, as of great importance. Justice, and the right to justice, can now count on a valid international instrument of jurisdiction. The Criminal Court has been approved, widening the prospectives opened up by the ad hoc Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia. It is by no means certain that it will overcome the obstacles placed before it, but it exists, and it constitutes the starting point for further possible, and necessary action on the part of the Radical Party; within the UN, there has finally been a serious and historic debate on the death penalty, and nations - the tragic absolute divinities of our century - have been led to call into question the myth of sovereignty placed above civil rights and the right to life.

We have undertaken this task together, in Rome as in Moscow, Zagreb and Sofia, and in all the other places where there are groups of people, apparently isolated but actually linked by a common bond of convictions and hopes, who have given their support to common efforts: by paying the membership fee (expensive as it is), by sending faxes, by distributing our leaflets and our press releases, our meagre but essential information, by organizing and taking part in the various militant and nonviolent events and demonstrations, and by writing letters - in short, by being always present and active in difficult, hostile and distant contexts: in Rome as in all the other cities where conflict, ethnic hatred, and racial, cultural and religious incomprehension were creating barriers between one citizen and the next, between one man and the next, negating the "irreductible humain" that provides the foundation, as Boutros Ghali has said, for the values and the hopes which bring us together in common dialogue.

And although we must never forget, in order to avoid dangerous errors of judgement, that the achievement of the two objectives has been made possible partly by the effective intervention of a "national" political force, the Lista Pannella-Reformatori (to which we send a warm greeting and best wishes in a difficult and controversial election campaign), and by the interest shown in these issues by the government and the parliament in Italy, we still have good reason to be satisfied: in the knowledge that the planning and all the exhausting daily work has been carried out by a handful of militants who form the only genuinely transnational political force of our times.

Our satisfaction, however, has been diminished and darkened by the void left by the sudden, painful and violent death of three of our comrades: Alberto Torzuoli, Andrea Tamburi and Mariateresa Di Lascia. Invaluable comrades and dear friends: Alberto for his generous militancy, his willingness to respond to the party's every need and call, his irreplaceable ability to cover the most varied and delicate assignments without asking for anything in return; Andrea for the way he had unhesitatingly given up a quiet and fruitful life in order to devote his energies to the uncertain and often thankless task of working for the party in strange and far-off places; and Mariateresa for the years of militancy in which she blessed us with her harsh and ready words, her human and political intelligence in relations and in values, absolutely necessary for an organization such as ours. Each of them in their different ways, they were an essential part of the body of our party, which has been built up and has survived over the

years thanks to the experience of so many different people, all of them incomparable and necessary. Let us remember and salute them, Alberto, Andrea and Mariateresa.

The last two years, between the Sofia Congress and now, have, I repeat, been intense and productive. The results obtained can probably still not be fully appreciated. A detailed account and a precise chronology of the party's activities have already been distributed, as the first and the second part (plus the various appendixes) of this introductory report. I have chosen this method to save some of the little time available (we have had to cut the Congress to the bare minimum, as you know, due to the lack of funds). So without going over the various phases of the last few years once again, I will restrict myself to a rapid outline and evaluation, with the aim of suggesting a number of points for discussion prior to the decisions of Congress. Decisions which I believe will centre on a single, inequivocal choice: which can be summed up in the awareness that a cycle in the life of the party must be considered as over, and that we must once again make a drastic break with our past - as we have done on other occa

sions, although in a different way (you will no doubt remember the meeting of the Federal Council held in Bohinj, in the former Yugoslavia).

It is our very successes which point us towards a decision of this type, however painful it may seem to be. We have certainly committed errors, but nothing that would lead us to change course radically. And the first positive factor still lies in our initial choice. In the light of all our experience, it is increasingly clear that the political choice on the basis of which the transnational party was planned and, to some extent, realized by the Budapest Congress of 1989 was and is right and far-sighted. We should have no regret, nor should we think that we can solve the current problems by renouncing what we have been and what we are. I would not allow this. Never so much as now, with the disorder that surrounds us in every part of the world, do we feel that the challenge to work for the policy of justice and nonviolence was and is valid, necessary and pressing. And while we do not believe in projects that attempt to impose a "new order" in the world through multilateral agreements between states, or through

the monopoly exercise of policing by a single state (at times necessary, but ultimately not satisfactory), we believe that it is still essential to work, as we wrote in the Budapest motion in 1989, "for the presentation in different parliaments, at the same time and in the same form, of similar bills, or the same bill" to promote law and justice at a transnational level. Closely linked to this is our other characteristic, the fact that we are an international which people join directly, not through the mediation of national parties, capable of involving citizens from all countries around nonviolent political initiatives promoted or supported in the various national parliaments by the parliamentarians who have enrolled in the party.

Never losing sight of these two indications, we have successfully fought our battles in the United Nations for the permanent Criminal Court and for the abolition of the death penalty.

In the two previous parts of this report, you will also find an account and an evaluation of the other initiatives which have absorbed our energy and that of the associations which have fought them with us, incorporating them in terms of method in the same manner as the Radical anti-prohibitionism that aims, through the definition and the realization of new laws, to develop the free responsibility of individual citizens. In the various issues tackled, they are therefore an invaluable common patrimony, in which there is nothing to be rejected or laid aside.

If we restricted ourselves to summing up what we have done, it would seem natural for the Congress to set the objective of HOW to further develop the various initiatives. And this is exactly what we began to do when we convened the Congress, asking ourselves a series of questions, all of them essential, and trying to find answers to them.

So, to sum up: to which projects and initiatives should the party give priority? And what dimension, what organizational structures will be necessary, in the future, to fight on the various fronts mentioned above, to open new offices, to tackle new issues? Is the party, with the militants and the leaders of the last few years, capable of ensuring political initiative at the necessary levels?

In other words: what financial investments will be needed to maintain current levels, or even to imagine a wider dimension, more suited to the new requirements? Can we identify possible new contributions, either from individuals or from "other" political organizations? Are there people in the West or in Central and Eastern Europe, either politicians or citizens, who are now able to assume the responsibility of leading the party?

And then, obviously, how can we improve the communication of a political body whose interlocutors have been, and will continue to be, the United Nations and parliamentarians, and which also aims to reach individual citizens and involve them directly in militant initiatives? For example, in view of the imminent technological revolution that is destined to shake the world, can the Radical Party afford to ignore the new communications technology? But here, too, what sort of investment and skills will be necessary? And how long will it take?

We have, by now, ascertained that in order to ensure the current level of activity we need a constant and regular annual income from members (or contributing non-members) equal to the amount reached with the 1992-1993 campaign, which means around 30,000 members paying the Italian membership fee. But are there other ways of ensuring this sort of income, in order to reduce the burden and the expectation that now lies exclusively on the so-called "Italian reserves"?

Finally, should the Radical Party concentrate on areas which we already know well, or should it open up to other areas, such as Africa, which do not bring in much income but which have shown interest in our message?

Faced with all these questions, we cannot give evasive answers if we want the Radical Party to be a political body capable of living up to its objectives, and above all to the needs of our times, a political body which is not merely a witness of events. Without being afraid of the truth, and without hiding from the truth, we must bear in mind that the party as it stands, with the leaders and the militants it has, with the current level of human resources, cannot count on more than about 200 people - those who are involved full-time in the daily grind of organizing initiatives, step by step, in New York, Rome, Moscow or wherever else, or those who give the party the precious resource of their free time, their energy, their intelligence and their participation.

To attempt to answer the questions and solve the various problems without bearing in mind this reality would be irresponsible, illusory and dangerous. We must not lose sight of this fundamental truth if we want our project to have a precise meaning, if we do not want it to be an illusory aspiration, for us and above all for those people who unload their dreams and their hopes onto the party, thus avoiding the responsibility of contributing towards their fulfilment.

We cannot and must not allow ourselves to become an alibi for anyone, including ourselves.

In addition to this consideration, however, there are others, no less pressing, from which we cannot escape by ignoring them, underestimating them, or even shaking them off. I have tried to address them, and I have reached the conclusion that they have a decisive effect on the choices that lie before the Congress, if we do not want to jump too far ahead.

The figures outlined in the Treasurer's report speak for themselves: in order to ensure minimum levels of activity the party needs an average of about 300-350 million lire a month, or 4 billion lire a year. As you can see from the enclosures, this average monthly figure includes the bare minumum needed to keep open the offices in Rome, Budapest, Bucharest, Tirana, Warsaw, Zagreb, Moscow, Kiev, Baku, Tbilisi, Erevan, St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Minsk, Alma Ata, Tashkent, Prague, Sofia, and now New York, covering expenses for the comrades who work in the offices and allowing the associations who share the Rome offices to have the indispensable facilities and services.

350 million lire a month, however, is only enough for daily survival; not to give effective support and to launch a single campaign of the same breadth as the UN campaigns on the death penalty and the special Court: let alone to pursue the other objectives laid down by motions, with all the problems and the requirements they entail.

350 million lire a month, or 4 billion lire a year, is too little for the ideas and the projects produced daily by the party of nonviolence and justice. Nor, in any case, do we want to restrict ourselves to mere survival. I wholeheartedly reject this prospect, and I hope that the Congress will agree with me. The problem to be solved is exactly the opposite: how can the party grow and become strong enough to relaunch its objectives?

In short, we are faced with a financial situation which threatens yet again to put an end to the Radical project. We tried to face the situation immediately as soon as we realized how serious it was, by cutting back or suspending activities in the six-month period before the Congress. We have not found acceptable solutions. Nor should we delude ourselves (and I will say this straight away, before anyone makes the proposal during this Congress): there is no chance of a repetition of the 1993 membership campaign in Italy, when around 30,000 people joined the party and gave us a period of respite, and more than that. The political situation in Italy has changed considerably, and there is no prospect of favourable circumstances such as those in 1992-93, with what has been defined as the "happy misunderstanding". If things somehow changed to make it possible to tap the "Italian reserves" once again, we would obviously be ready to grasp the opportunity; but as things stand it would be absurd to count on this event

uality. In any case, a situation in which the Radical Party were forced every year to devote most of its energy to attracting the number of members or contributors needed for mere survival would be unthinkable: it would be an unproductive venture, or a venture which produces only self-perpetuation. Too many other bodies already operate in this manner, exhausting all their resources on themselves. This is not what we want.

The combination of financial difficulties and more strictly political problems is, as you can see, sufficient to create insuperable obstacles, or to require drastic choices.

I have no proposal to make to Congress, however, except that we must realize that we have reached the end of a cycle - a cycle in which we have planned and achieved a certain model of party structure and organization, consequently with certain requirements in terms of human, financial, and structural resources. This cycle, which has lasted a total of around six years, must be considered closed. Let me make this clear: it is a period which must be brought to a close, not the party. The party should not be closed, not should it be threatened with closure, as happened in 1992-93. What we can do, therefore, is to embark on a period of "extraordinary" operation, of "suspension", that is a period of reflection about what we have done and if, when and how it will be possible to set out on a new start - firmly anchored to the past but also radically different in terms of instruments, structure and resources.

This is not an easy way out, nor an appeal for one last effort, for the last challenge. It is not a repetition of what happened in Budapest in 1989, when the party organs were suspended and the party was entrusted to a "quadrumvirate" of leaders, who in 1992-93 decided that the situation had developed so as to allow the relaunch the party. It is not a repetition of the decision of the 1992 Congress, held in two sessions in Rome, when we launched the campaign to attract 30,000 Italian members. As I have said, we are not faced with either of these two hypotheses, although the similarities may be striking.

Our current situation presents its own specific problems. These include financial problems, as I have mentioned, but the main problem we must face is political: the party's leaders and militants are not sufficient, in terms of numbers rather than quality, to support the growth of the party.

A problem of leadership, then. As I said above, those who are involved full-time and those who lend part of their invaluable free time make up a total of little over two hundred people, but despite this they have managed to achieve what they have achieved over the last few years (and this Congress itself is proof); but today, tomorrow, and every day, we have to realize that with a party of these dimensions it is no longer possible to work with valid prospects. Paolo Vigevano, the Treasurer at the time, had already warned us of this in his report to the Sofia meeting, but since then there has been no substantial change in the situation.

We can ask ourselves, certainly, what would have happened if other countries had repeated what has happened in Italy over the last few years, in terms of resources and militancy, even to a much lesser extent. But there has not been a contribution of this nature. The Congress must take note of this fact, reflect upon it, and come up with an answer: although it is true that over four hundred deputies and parliamentarians from many countries have joined the party in the last two years, and although this contribution has at times been decisive in helping the party to achieve some of its success, it must also be admitted that very few of these parliamentarians of ours (and I repeat, ours) have realized the importance of a more substantial contribution, in terms of their presence and their collaboration - not full-time, but in their "free time", as we understand it - in order to give the party the size and the strength necessary.

Many parliamentarians, especially from Eastern Europe, are present at this Congress. When they hear this report, and even more so when they follow the debate, they may well wonder "What are we doing here, when there is so little discussion of Bosnia, Macedonia, Chechnya, or Russia, for example, and so much discussion of other things which have nothing to do with our problems?" I will answer these doubts straight away: the first objective we must set ourselves, if we want not only to "discuss" but also to act effectively on the issue of Bosnia, and the other issues, is how to make the Radical Party survive and grow stronger. Ultimately, I am not criticizing our comrades for not having "given" to the party, but for not having "taken" it, for not having occupied it, for not having made it their own, for not having wanted or been able to use their membership and their militancy in this party to strengthen their "presence" in their own national contexts. Dear friends, deputies from the Duma, from the Bosnian parl

iament or the Bulgarian parliament: it is up to you to turn this situation round, to make this transnational party a banner or a weapon for your national battles. This is why the Radical Party is not only transnational but also transdivisional! In the last few weeks, in Voivodina, a whole group of political leaders have joined the party. I hope that these new friends will be able to conduct great battles for Voivodina, raising the banner of Gandhi and using the support of the party, of its Italian members, its French members, or its members anywhere else in the world. What has happened in Voivodina is an example to follow and repeat in terms of active, rather than passive presence.

If this is one of the main problems to be solved, it is clear that I cannot give an answer or provide solutions. I can only wait for something which is beyond my control. This is why I have no proposal to make to the Congress other than to allow the whole party a pause for reflection and for a general rethink. Not a closure, not a pretence, not a threat, not an appeal to good will, or to a sense of guilt.

I do not know, at the moment, how this pause for reflection should be organized, nor the forms and the instruments that it should assume. This must be the subject of the debate of Congress. I am, however, firmly convinced that a period of extraordinary operation such as I am proposing will require extraordinary structures and forms, in the nature of a "stewardship". A stewardship which would take the form of a "receivership" if its mandate were assigned for this purpose. This is clearly not the case: the extraordinary organ, that is the "steward", should have a free rein, although with a fixed deadline, to explore the possible paths towards the relaunch of the party, in new forms, as a "positive" party, not a party that has withdrawn into its shell, into a situation of stalemate. Only as an extreme measure, when every path has been explored, would there be a case for the definitive closure of the Radical Party. This is a great responsibility for a single person, true, but it is also in keeping with our essen

tially "monocratic" tradition. We may decide that the "steward" can - freely and without restrictions - call on the opinions of a group of party members: members who can be consulted in the most suitable manner, therefore chosen so that their opinions can easily be heard (it should be a small group, not a plethoric body such as the current General Council, whose meetings cost the party almost as much as a full Congress).

This period of extraordinary operation, of suspension, of stewardship (or whatever we decide to call it) must not, however, be a period of inertia for any of our members. Quite the opposite. The questions I raised at the beginning still remain, and require answers which cannot be found by a steward, or whatever other body we decide to appoint, alone. The task involves every single member, and it will also be important to define the channels by which it can be carried out. The suspension will also involve the associations, both federate members and "friends", which will be called on to rethink their activities in order to work out how they can be reinforced and how they can become less dependent on the party, less of a burden on the party.

If we consider the work done by the associations, we can safely say that we are satisfied. Some of them have shown themselves capable of initiative and organization: there can be no federation except between real bodies, which by joining in federation put some of their projects and their organizational structure to a common purpose, but which can still organize some of their activities independently. Some of the associations, on the other hand, have not achieved the "critical weight" necessary to give rise to independence and true federation, as we understand it. At times, even in the recent past, there have been moments of conflict between the party and one or other of the associations: the association claiming full independence while it was clear that it could only exist because of the support of the party and of its financial and organizational resources.

This argument has recurred many times in the thirty-year life of the Radical Party: from the Italian League for Divorce onwards, there has always been an open debate between the two constituent poles of Radical associationism: and this debate has never been resolved by adopting a clear, automatic solution to the problems involved. So is the party a party of associations? Not if we remember that the party itself has always had an essential, driving role, also in terms of organization and financial responsibility. So there has been no clear and final solution, but "political" solutions based on the awareness that the co-existence of different bodies must not lead to fragmentation or to a technical and bureaucratic "specialization" of duties.

When we convened the Congress, we believed that it was necessary, or at least advisable, to start to think about modifying the statute. We had discovered contradictions, difficulties and mistakes in the statute we had drawn up in Sofia. The biennial convocation of Congress, for example, or the regular convocation of the General Council, are not realistically possible when we consider our financial resources: we therefore began to think about alterations to the statute to make the party structures lighter and more efficient, perhaps by making greater use of information technology - the new tools which are revolutionizing markets, the media, and methods of organization, in a trans-national direction (with a hyphen, however!). We even tried to imagine a true "party of telecommunications" (which is not the same as a party which uses telecommunications).

Almost immediately, however, we realized that the problem of the statute was becoming secondary, or even a form of distraction. So the definition of the nature of our "suspension" will not have to be based on a reform of the statute. For now, the statute will remain as it is: but the problem of the statute also remains, and will have to be one of the first issues tackled during the period of suspension.

What I have said so far in the third part of the report is only in the form of suggestions and proposals. You must now reflect and consider with great attention. I believe that the suggestions and proposals are positive, aimed at structural alterations which can relaunch the party and make it stronger. The Congress must therefore assume the responsibility of "ratifying" them all together in order to be able to concentrate on defining the ways of "governing" the transition, without leaping too far ahead and without recoiling into a static and fruitless conservation of the past, solely for the sake of self-preservation. I hope that this sense of responsibility will prevail, whether my proposals are accepted or whether others are put forward.

And if it will comfort us in our choice, because it shows us that we are not alone in conducting these transnational battles, I would like to point to two recent and significant events: the fact that the Riformatori-Lista Pannella, in the final document of their first Congress, took on board the issues that are at the heart of our political action, almost in their entirety, and the fact that a cross-party group has been formed in the European Parliament which has a strong European Federalist and transnational character, and which can therefore uphold our initiatives, or other initiatives that we would identify with, in the European Parliament. These developments are great contributions: we are already certain of this as far as our Riformatori-Lista Pannella comrades are concerned, and have good reason to be certain as far as the new cross-party group in Strasbourg is concerned.

Dear comrades and friends,

I hope that your debate, despite lack of time, will be attentive and open to the scenarios around us, and those we can foresee for the future. Things are changing rapidly all over the world, in Europe, and in Italy, and the problems to be tackled are very different from those we had in Budapest or in Sofia. One significant example is enough to demonstrate this fact: this year we have added an office in New York to those which we had already opened in the various countries. It was opened almost in an unplanned manner, to allow us to follow the proceedings and the debate of the United Nations Assembly. But it has been an extremely important experience. Above all, obviously, because it allowed us to establish daily contact with the international community of peoples, that is with a frequent interlocutor of our work, and in particular with Boutros Boutros Ghali, to whom I would like to send our best wishes for his work in the future. It has also been important because it has shown us and allowed us to experience

the reality of a country such as the United States: how is it possible, we began to wonder, to create a truly transnational and "world" dimension for our work if we ignore and remain isolated from the United States? And so, from an almost unplanned development, we have taken the opportunity to reflect on the real exigencies and the real dimensions of a party that aims to be a transnational force in the current political and historical context, a party which is not content to retire into an inadequate, provincial dimension. I should add that this further step towards the necessary "world" dimension has also contributed to the serious and even painful decisions that I have asked you to take at this Congress.

I also want to bring your attention to some considerations on the situation in Europe: and not only because for the next four years I will be working as the EU Commissioner for humanitarian aid, fishing and consumer protection. Certainly, I will undertake these activities with all the force of my convictions and the determination of my militancy in the Radical Party, repeating the commitment I made when I entered the Italian parliament: not to allow myself to be changed by the institutions, but to try to change them, even if only a little.

But I think that Europe should be at the centre of your attention, although without neglecting other areas (and at this point I would like to remind you, very briefly, that the few contacts we had in Africa, for example, have been lost, and it seems to me that it is worth trying again in that part of the world, as well as in the more "secular" Moslem countries such as the Caucasian republics that were formerly part of the Soviet Union). Europe is faced with an extremely difficult appointment, the 1996 conference. The Union may well come out of the conference in pieces. The damage would be irreparable, for Europe, for the world, for the countries of Eastern Europe which are now hoping to join the Union. It is therefore clear that, while in the past our interlocutors were Italy, because of our previous roots, and the United Nations, we must now add Europe, and give Europe priority attention. In our discussions before the Congress, we also came to the conclusion that it would be useful, as a mark of this develo

pment, to move the political barycentre of the party nearer to the seat of the European Parliament and the European institutions: that is, to Brussels, by using the facilities at the disposal of the Radical Euro-MPs (which are now more substantial than in the past). We have not come up with any precise answers with regard to operational and organizational details, but this task could be assigned to the "steward", to the group of members at his or her side, or even to individual members as far as they are able.

As you see, the period of extraordinary operation that lies before us will not be time wasted. If we work well, it may turn out to be a brief period, although I do not believe we should set ourselves precise deadlines. If we work well: that is, if we are able to take a true step forward in quality, in operative rather than in abstract terms - if we are capable, in short, of answering the central question: what form will the transnational and transdivisional party have to take if it is to overcome the current difficulties and use the experience to face the problems of the future?

It is up to you to suggest the paths, the means and the timetable for this development - it is up to the Congress. And before you begin I would like to make one important recommendation. The time and the tools of work at your disposal are probably insufficient: not a moment must be wasted - there is no time to look towards the past, neither to congratulate ourselves on the things we have done nor to recriminate each other. We must not waste words. The first two parts of this report now serve only as materials for our debate. To linger over them would be pointless.

And so, as well as giving you my best wishes for your work, it only remains for me to thank you, especially those who have worked so hard in the Rome offices in Via di Torre Argentina: the secretarial committee, with its exhausting daily meetings, and the duties undertaken by each of its members: and all the other people who have carried out their duties, often thankless, with great enthusiasm and responsibility. Without their daily presence, nothing of what we have achieved would have been possible. In particular, I would like to thank Marco Pannella, for his constant readiness for dialogue, his constant supply of ideas and his driving force. The Italian and European Parliament deputies, and the party workers in our offices in Italy, in Europe, and around the world, the militant outposts of a difficult and essential battle. All those who as members and contributors have allowed the party to exist, even just for a day or an hour.

I would also like to thank everyone who has worked to allow the Congress to be held with efficacy, calm and a spirit of collaboration. Without these conditions, the hours to come could be wasted or not exploited to the full. If this is not the case, we owe it to all those who have demonstrated great patience when faced with what were initially my responsibilities, my worries, and my problems.

The time has now come for me to take my leave: a formal, rather than a substantial leave. In fact I hope that the diversity of our tasks and responsibilities can give rise to opportunities for dialogue, for joint or parallel initiatives, and for struggles for the same objectives, capable of involving not only ourselves, but all those people around Europe and the rest of the world who act in the name of common ideas and projects. On my part, I will try to pass on and explain this message to all the people I meet in my work, Radicals or whoever else; this, however, is also your duty. And so, once again, long live the transnational and transdivisional Radical Party, the party of the right to life and the life of rights, the party of nonviolence.