Word: moro
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Premier Aldo Moro, 47, is the antithesis of the voluble, emotional Italian. A reserved onetime law professor, he detests the acid name calling of Italian politics, is so shy that he often travels by car to avoid the necessary social amenities on planes and trains. Moro's political genius is for compromise, sometimes achieved by pure tenacity. He once reduced a colleague to near collapse by arguing reasonably for four uninterrupted hours. So conscientiously capable is Moro of seeing all sides of every question that friends and foes alike are convinced that he agrees only with them...
...There are risks and the risks are great," warned left-wing Socialist Leader Pietro Nenni. We must accept "the margin of risk," declared Christian Democratic Chief Aldo Moro. The atmosphere plainly was more suspicious than auspicious for the new Italian government. After months of dickering, while the nation marked time under a caretaker Cabinet, the Christian Democrats finally were ready to conclude their marriage of convenience-or perhaps inconvenience-with Nenni's left-wing Socialists. It was the first time in 16 years that a doctrinaire Marxist party would share power in any major West European Cabinet...
Spurred on by the Kennedy assassination-both Nenni and Moro feared that President Johnson might not be as sympathetic to the "opening to the left" -the negotiators then hammered out an 8,000-word program of cooperation that was just vague enough so that either party, or any faction, could interpret it as desired. On foreign policy, the Socialists balked at pledging "fidelity" to NATO but settled for "loyalty" to the Atlantic Alliance and agreement to continue discussions with the U.S. over Italian participation in MLF, the proposed fleet of Polaris-equipped surface ships. In return for accepting anti-Communist...
Details of the domestic program were just as fuzzy as the foreign policy agreements. Moro said he favored economic development "through planning," but insisted that private enterprise would receive the greatest possible initiative. Both sides also agreed to limited controls overspeculation in urban real estate, gradual abolition of sharecropping and raising tenant farmers' share of the profits from 53% to 58%. The agreement also included a political loyalty oath: the partners promised not to join in Parliament with either the Communists on the left or the free-enterprising Liberals, Monarchists and neo-Fascists on the right. But outside Parliament...
...center-left coalition is neither Stalinist nor a sellout. It is a muddled alliance between parties of essentially different aims, and it could break up at any time. The future, as Moro said, "is new, difficult and full of problems...