Prodi Says He Would Pull Troops From Iraq

ROME -- The center-left candidate to become Italy's next prime minister said Monday that he would pull out Italy's 2,600 troops from Iraq "as soon as possible" if his coalition wins general elections this month.

"When we go to the government we'll decide for a speedy pullout of the troops, in secure conditions, talking with the Iraqi authorities so not to create situations of risk or danger -- which means as soon as possible," said Prodi. Prodi's platform says his government would immediately discuss the withdrawal, but this was the first time that he has given a sense of the speed of a pullout.

Berlusconi, defying strong domestic opposition, supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and sent some 3,000 troops there after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to help rebuild the country. The contingent now numbers around 2,600 troops. Berlusconi's government has pledged to withdraw the troops by the end of 2006, replacing it with a civilian force. The government stressed the pullout is being conducted in agreement with allies and Iraqi authorities. Italy's 2,600 troops make up the fourth-largest contingent in Iraq; Britain has about 8,000 troops and South Korea has about 3,200.

Prodi, who has announced plans to partially reintroduce an inheritance tax abolished by the conservatives, insisted the tax would only affect the wealthiest, which he described as "those who have several million euros (dollars)." Berlusconi, in office since 2001, has lost his shine recently, largely due to the country's stagnant economy. Opinion polls have shown his conservative bloc trailing, even though he contends that surveys commissioned by his Forza Italia party showed a virtual tie between the two coalitions.

Prodi's campaign song beckons to the hard left - 28-Mar-06 - 'We choose multipolarism," it says, bash, bang, in the Italian center-left's official election program.

Which, as a vote-grabber, is a little like backing photosynthesis or transubstantiation. But there it stands, squeezed in between world peace, European integration, and international legality, right up at the top of Romano Prodi's signed list of good global intentions as Italy's would-be prime minister.

You remember multipolarity (well, maybe). It's not multilateralism, or just making sure everybody gets consulted in arriving at big international decisions.

Rather it's the idea that the world is fated to split into various power groupings like Europe, China and Russia, and that this one is good development because it creates a series of counterweights, the European Union heading the pack, to muffle American power.

Obviously, the United States, including most Democrats, has no use for the concept because it designates America as civilization's central problem and seeks to build a European identity in opposition to it.

The multipolar religion's charter member and main evangelist is Jacques Chirac. Recent converts include Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Spain's José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Depending on who's in the room, the Russians and the Chinese can talk the talk.

But Gerhard Schröder, although coaxed to join by Chirac, avoided the multipolar chorus as too antagonistic. Nicolas Sarkozy, who could be president of France next year, scorns it as conflictual, artificial and divisive. At the European Union in Brussels, Prodi's successor as president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, calls incantation about counterweights just plain counterproductive.

So why has Prodi, a fairly orthodox- seeming politician over the years, with a good chance to oust Silvio Berlusconi on April 10, headed down multipolarity's sawdust path?

The kind answer is that Prodi is just offering up some verbal stylin' with an anti-American, epater-les-bourgeois subtext to a segment of his coalition of incoherence. Beyond its democratic left core, Prodi's alliance drags along communists, anti-globalists, and a handful of extremist unsavories.

In a less accepting mode, you could say that if Prodi is making these kinds of concessions to his allies on the far left now he will have make more palpable ones against reform of the economy or bureaucracy once in office. You could even assume he is serious about multipolarity and will regard Italy's increased role in NATO (it ranks number four as a provider of manpower to alliance missions) as Zapatero-style, domestic-policy scrip to be bargained off when opportune.

The fact is, Prodi has made an unmistakable effort to give his views on multipolarity prominence. It is the first subject he expounds on in 150 pages of question-and-answer that make up a book called "Ci sarà un'Italia," published to coincide with the campaign.

Setting up his argument, Prodi places in one corner a "unipolar American conception" of the world that involves the premise that Italy is a subaltern, condemned to the role of the Yanks' majorette, beating a drum and shutting its mouth. The alternative, says Prodi - recalling how the president of China told him the Chinese liked the multipolarity idea and held euros to prove it - is "whether we accept and accentuate the myth of a grand unipolarity or work to create a world rich in vitality, energy and diverse solutions."

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