THE EUROPEAN page 3

Hilary Clarke looks into the inner sanctums of the leading lights of the Commission

(...) No prizes for guessing the owner of the stuffed alligator with a pink ribbon. It is to be found tied to black metal lamp on the desk of Humanitarian Aid and Fisheries Commissioner Emma Bonino. It was, she explained, given to her as a joke by the Cuban fisheries minister, whose country supported Canada during Europe's fish war with Ottawa last year."I didn't know where to put it, but I thought it looked better with the ribbon on anyway," said Bonino. The alligator rubs shoulders with a brightly painted wooden statue of Pinocchio, also a present.

But the unlikely pair arc rare blobs of frivolity in a landscape which spells commitment. On the wall behind Bonino's desk are a series of framed posters advertising her political party, the Italian Radicals, a poster denouncing the death penalty, a photographof the commissioner hanging from a helicopter on one of her humanitarian aid missions, and a 1991 cutting from the New York Times telling of her arrest during a protest for clean syringes for heroin addicts.

Bonino agrees that decorating her office was not her first priority when she moved in last year and her desk and most of the furniture were already there. The only significant cange she made was to get rid of "a really deadly black couch", which she replaced with a khaki one, and some tasteful linen blinds she added. (...)