Telekom, Dini denied by the US

NEW YORK – The representatives of the US government were outraged and disappointed yesterday, late in the evening, to break the silence. The comments and suspicions launched by Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini, in Parliament last Wednesday, regarding the “Republic” revelations on the Telekom Serbia affair, caused the new foreign policy team of George W. Bush to lose patience. Result: a harsh, dry, categorical denial, which sounds like a warning for the foreign minister. “The claim that the United States would conduct a secret campaign to discredit the Italian foreign minister Dini is simply not true,” said a State Department spokesman, whose leader is now the hero of the Gulf war, Colin Powell. “Italy”, the spokesman added, “is an old and trusted ally with whom we have worked closely over the years to bring peace and stability to the Balkans”. “We are very disappointed – said the Washington diplomat, adding to the dose – that Minister Dini has chosen to make these statements completely unfounded before the Italian Parliament and the public”. American indignation was taken for granted. Who heard the minister on Wednesday, in the Senate, while he put forward the hypothesis that the Italian foreign policy in the Balkans “was not appreciated by the CIA laborers who operated in Rome and did propaganda against the action of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”, understood that Washington would react very badly. The only uncertainty concerned the type of counteroffensive: Washington could simply protest in silence, or give voice to the discontent. After 48 hours of time – to think, evaluate the consequences, listen to the embassy officials on Via Veneto – the State Department raised its bar, opening a crisis between the two sides of the Atlantic just a few months after the summit of G8 in Genoa, attended by the Republican president Bush. Relations between the United States and Italy have always had a very mixed trend, with periodic crises, from Sigonella to Cermis, from the ham wars to the hesitations during the Kosovo campaign. In the past Washington had not hidden a certain irritation for Giulio Andreotti’s pro-Arab positions, but had never so firmly denied a foreign minister, as happened yesterday. How do you explain it? And what scenarios are opening now? The most curious, almost paradoxical aspect of these polemics is that Dini has always been considered very close – by extraction, ideology and personal history – to the Americans. The long stay in Washington, in the years in which he worked in international financial institutions on behalf of the Bank of Italy, had allowed him to weave precious relationships and understand the mentality of his interlocutors. Overseas friends called him “Lambertow”. But, over time, these relationships have been crumbling. The support that the Americans seemed to give to Dini’s initiatives has progressively slackened. The foreign minister has begun to differentiate more and more from Washington’s positions, especially in relations with Slobodan Milosevic, up to the “accident” of Rambouillet, of which he spoke in an interview with “Republic” James Rubin, ex-right-hand man of Madeleine Albright. “During the negotiations for Kosovo,” explained Rubin, “Dini said that there was no need to impose on the Serbs the presence of NATO troops in Kosovo for peacekeeping. From the diplomatic point of view, it was a tactical mistake, because the Serbs thought that the allies were not united “. Other ambiguities about the behavior of the Italian government towards Belgrade emerged in the reconstruction, on the affair “Telekom Serbia” (and on its bribes). Hence the suspicions raised by Dini: these too, however, punctually denied by the State Department.

March 03 2001