Posted on 08/18/2008 3:11:42 PM PDT by Nachum
(IsraelNN.com) In a letter appearing in the weekend edition of the respected Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga revealed that the government of Italy agreed to allow Arab terrorist groups freedom of movement in the country in exchange for immunity from attacks in Italy.
Cossiga wrote that the government of the late Prime Minister Aldo Moro reached a "secret non-belligerence pact between the Italian state and Palestinian resistance organizations, including terrorist groups," in the 1970s. According to the former president, it was Moro himself who designed the terms of the agreement with the foreign Arab terrorists. Ironically, Moro later met his death at the hands of homegrown Italian terrorists, the Red Brigades, in 1978. Cossiga was president of Italy from 1985-1992 and is today a senator-for-life in the Italian legislature.
"The terms of the agreement were that the Palestinian organizations could even maintain armed bases of operation in the country, and they had freedom of entry and exit without being subject to normal police controls, because they were 'handled' by the secret services," Cossiga explained.
As Interior Minister, Cossiga said that he learned PLO members in Italy had diplomatic immunity as representatives of the Arab League. When he became alarmed by the heavy weapons defenses installed around the homes of PLO members living in Rome, the guards were persuaded to switch to light arms.
In his letter, the former Italian president also linked the Arab terrorist groups of the 1970s with the Italian far-left. "The Palestinian organizations could even maintain armed bases of operation in the country." - Cossiga According to Cossiga, he received a telegram from the head of an anti-Israel terrorist group headquartered at the time in Beirut requesting the return of one of their surface-to-air missiles that had gone missing. The missile was intercepted by Italian police while being "driven on the streets by a well-known ideologue of the extra-parliamentary left!" Cossiga wrote.
In an article in Corriere della Sera the week before Cossiga's admission, a former leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) also claimed that his terror group and the Italian leadership had reached an accord protecting Italy from attack in exchange for Italian non-interference in PFLP activities in Italy. The former PFLP boss, Bassam Abu Sharif, later became a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and personal advisor to the late arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat.
While there were several terrorist attacks on targets in Italy in the years following the alleged "protection" deal, most of them could be traced to Abu Nidal's terrorist organization. Abu Nidal rejected the authority of the PLO leadership and many of his attacks, including those in Rome, were assassinations of PLO figures and other Arab diplomats.
Imagine if the bastards had planned attacks against us from a safe base of operations in Italy. Absolutely crazy.
The Dane is still is there ready to burn down your farm and take your daughter, but now he has your gold to finance the endeavor.
It is amazing if you think about it. There is NO doubt that the animals would attack us anyway that they could if they had the chance. We’ve been very fortunate to date. I too think that President Bush will one day be seen as a visionary on some issues.
Well we already knew what pathetic terrorist-coddling weasels the Italians can be — just look at the aftermath of the Achille Lauro terrorism, etc.
btw, I have read that Abbas (current head of the PLO/PA) was very close to the hijacking of the Achille Lauro and during the crisis referred to the Italian govt. as “our friends”
You have your terrorists confused. Italy had problems with left-wing groups such as the Red Brigades and the Gattis back in the 1970s.
Feeding the alligator, hoping he won’t eat you...he will only eat you last..
Correct. He was also first cousin to Enrico Berlinguer, head of the Italian Communist Party for many years. Cossiga himself was a Christian Democrat.
Ironically, the Italian Gov’t (with Cossiga as Interior Minister) refused to appease its own domestic, non-Islamist terrorists (Red Brigades) in 1978 when they kidnapped Moro himself. Moro’s bullet-riddled body was found in the trunk of a car a few weeks later.
We can be...........just vote for Barry.
twice........
Of course not, they were traitors. The Red Brigades had virtually no support in Italy, outside of the economics department of Padua University. The Christian Democrats didn't support them, the Socialists didn't support them and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) didn't support them. They fanatic traitors and a threat to the stability of the Italian state.
On the other hand, from an Italian perspective (and I'm not trying to justify it) the Israel/PLO fight was just two groups of foreigners with a disagreement. The Italians paid off one side in order to keep it out of Italy.
Italy did that with Hitler also to keep him from invading.
You’re probably right. I guess I remember it as Naples because I was at that USO just weeks before they hit it. My Seabee buddy was in the bar when they hand-grenaded it.
My opinion of the Italians socialists is unchanged.
And let us not forget, Sardinia was also the birthplace of Antonio Gramsci, who incidentally, was born not too far from my mother’s town.
Sick.
Yet they turned away refugees from Iraq at the same time.
That's exactly what he should have expected.
One of my all time favorite commies!
In 1989 on vacation in Liguria I stopped in at the California Bar in Cavi de Lavagna and met an old gentleman named Zio Luigi. Luigi wasn’t my uncle he was just a guy everyone called Zio Luigi. He had family in California and said he spoke a little English that after about thee drinks it got much better. I told him that after a few drinks my Italian improved too. There followed a sincere attempt to improve international communications.
Somewhere during the proceedings he asked if I had a car. I said yes and he said that the next day would be “a festival if my party”, which I took to mean a birthday or anniversary or something. He invited me to come and I said I’d pick him up that afternoon but that I had planned to go to the the local Saint Somebody’s day celebration in Varese Ligure later. He said they were all going to that celebration too and that their deal would be finished by then.
When I showed up at the tire shop his real nephew ran Zio Luigi said the place was very hard to get to and insisted on driving. I let him. Big Mistake. We ended up driving all over the area picking up friends of his who wanted to go to the festival too - all of them older than Luigi. By the time we got to the event there were six Italian senior citizens and me stuffed into a Fiat Mille.
So eventually we get to the event and there’s this big banner - “Welcome! To the Annual PCI Member Festival — Sponsored by Lowenbrau”. I had been used as an pawn by Italian Communist Party. I felt like a useful idiot.
I was a bit uncomfortable - 1) I was the only American, 2) I was the only non-communist, 3) I was the only one under 60. The thing that stood out was that all these people were old. Italians just weren’t joining the party and they admitted that. I had gone to UC Berkeley and thought I knew a thing or two about communists and communism. Turns out everything I knew was wrong. Unlike our Berkeley reds these guys were way short on anti-American rants. Most of them had family here, most had been helped by American service men during WWII and a couple had survived Stalingrad and tours as POWs in the Soviet Union.
There main criticism of America was that they could not understand why President Reagan had had to leave office. At that time Khadafi owned 25% of Fiat and it’s associated subsidiaries including the toll booths on the Autostrdas. Anybody who dropped bombs on Khadafi was as far as these PCI members were concerned a true friend of socialist labor. Besides he was about their age. I got cornered by a ‘70 something guy who had probably known Granmsci who kept asking “Reagan was strong, Reagan was a man, Bush is... WHAT!!?” I spent a fair part of my afternoon trying to explain the finer points of the American constitution to a bunch slightly intoxicated of geriatric Reagonite Marxists. The good news is that I came away with what is now a great collection of PCI memorabilia though I couldn’t talk them out of the Lowenbrau banner - the company wanted that back.
A few of years later the Tangente scandal hit and the PCI was no more. Zio Luigi wound up as a Liga member and I suspect most of the others have passed on by now. The PCI remains my favorite bunch of communists.
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