Word: craxi
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Still, when Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini, 60, leader of the small but pivotal Republican Party, abruptly withdrew from the government with two other Republican ministers on Oct. 16, Craxi's government seemed doomed to collapse. Spadolini was angered by the Prime Minister's decision to release Mohammed Abul Abbas Zaidan, the Palestinian Liberation Front leader who Washington believes planned to use the Achille Lauro to launch an attack on Israel. Furious at having been excluded from any prior consultation in that decision, Spadolini was also protesting what he considered the pro-Arab tilt in Rome's Middle East policy...
...With the deft touch of political prestidigitators, Italian party leaders last week made a government crisis disappear as if it had never happened. Two weeks after Prime Minister Bettino Craxi had marched up Rome's Quirinal Hill to present his resignation to Italy's President Francesco Cossiga over his handling of the Achille Lauro hijacking, Craxi returned to reclaim his place as leader of his five-party ruling coalition. The President and the four other coalition partners decided to consider Craxi's resignation provisional, thereby allowing the same government with the same policies to continue. After an expected vote...
...Craxi survived because none of his rivals for power was ready for a test of strength in new elections, especially over foreign policy issues as delicate as Italy's relations with the Middle East and its traditional links to the U.S. The Prime Minister emerged, if anything, stronger from the ordeal. Looking tired after two weeks of nonstop finagling, Craxi could not hide a note of triumph over his renewed mandate. Said he: "I always believed that this crisis could be rapidly overcome, since I never believed that the reasons behind it were sufficient to cause a rupture...
Criticism from the U.S. and from Spadolini's Republicans came as a "bitter surprise" to Craxi, who sought to appear as a wounded but loyal ally standing up for his nation's independence. Italians responded positively to the Prime Minister's posture. Indeed, a poll in the newsweekly L'Espresso showed 61% approval for Craxi's show of independence from the U.S., while only 19% disapproved...
...Rome 17 hours later, carrying Abbas and another Palestinian official, Stiner hopped into a T-39 trainer jet. He took off from a taxiway without tower permission and shadowed the 737 to Rome, where he made an emergency landing. In his resignation speech last week, Prime Minister Bettino Craxi announced that Italy had filed a protest over both the T-39's landing and the pursuit of the 737 by an F-14 to within 25 miles of Rome. In any event, Abbas proved victorious in the game of cat and mouse. He soon headed for Belgrade, leaving a trail...