Colombia president blasts activists - again

By Constanza Vieira

Bogota, Colombia, Sept. 12 (IPS)— Colombian President Alvaro Uribe lashed out at activists for the second time in a week, just when the international human rights community was hoping for a rectification of a speech he gave on Monday, in which he accused local human rights groups of defending terrorism.

Uribe’s latest disparaging remarks about human rights defenders came Thursday in the town of Chita, in the central Colombian department of Boyacá, where he was accompanying the armed forces commanders to assess the impact of an attack that military sources blamed on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main rebel group.

A “horse-bomb” left eight dead, 15 wounded and 34 homes destroyed in the town Wednesday.

The president said that “governing with transparency” gave him “the right to be firm, and to demand respect for all Colombians in the world, regardless of the noise that the defenders of terrorism might make.”

Alluding to human rights groups, the far-right Uribe said, “We turn a deaf ear to the defenders of terrorism, the sponsors of terrorism, and we disregard those who are misled because all they know about Colombia is based on information that is distorted by terrorism.”

The president had already labeled local human rights groups as guerrilla sympathizers and defenders of terrorism on Monday, after the publication of a human rights report “The Authoritarian Spell,” which was highly critical of the Uribe administration’s record one year into the president’s term.

His statements Thursday came as a bucket of cold water for the local and international activists and officials taking part in a human rights conference Tuesday through Thursday in Bogota.

The participants included Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) representative Robert Goldman, Amnesty International’s director for the Americas, Susan Lee, French magistrate Philippe Texier, and José Miguel Vivanco, the executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.

Both the IACHR and the New York-based Human Rights Watch had urged Uribe to rectify the harsh statements he made Monday about human rights groups.

The European Union, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights office in Colombia, the London-based Amnesty International, and Colombia’s Office of the People’s Defender (ombudsman) also expressed their support for the work of local human rights defenders, in response to Uribe’s speech Monday.

Vice-President Francisco Santos had confirmed that he would attend the closure of the international human rights conference, which was held in a hotel on the north side of the capital, in order to hear the conclusions of the three-day gathering first-hand.

But the organizers said that after Uribe’s fresh outburst against human rights activists, the vice-president would not be welcome at the conference.

“Far from retracting or toning down his Monday statements, (Uribe) has declared war” on human rights groups, according to Gustavo Gallón, director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, which has consultative status with the United Nations.

“Uribe used new adjectives to discredit human rights organizations” Thursday, said the activist. “Under these circumstances, the climate is not appropriate for the vice-president to be here” at the gathering, he added.

Vivanco, of Human Rights Watch, said Uribe’s remarks “were most unfortunate.”

“I hope the president ... realizes that our organizations condemned the attack in Chita as an act of terrorism just hours after it occurred, and before the government had even made any statement of its own,” he added.

Gallón said “Uribe’s words were not a slip of the tongue, but an accurate expression of his thinking and of the government’s security policy.

“The government is determined to wage war on human rights groups, civil society organizations and the local residents of areas under guerrilla influence, rather than taking direct action against those who have taken up arms,” he maintained.

“The government is waging a war against unarmed civilians, and especially against non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It is doing so with these remarks, as well as with arbitrary arrests,” said Gallón.

“With his words, what the president is announcing is a new phase in which that is only going to intensify,” he warned.

Uribe’s remarks “put our lives at risk, and we want to state for the record that any attack, any threat against human rights defenders in Colombia is a result of the president’s statements,” said Gloria Flores, with Minga, a local human rights group.

“We urge the president to show good sense, and to treat human rights defenders and social and labor leaders as they should be treated,” she added.

“Our work is legitimate, and is carried out to guarantee democracy and to secure respect for human rights and international humanitarian law in this country,” said Flores.

Gallón said Uribe’s statements this week amounted to “a flagrant failure to live up to the government’s commitment to countries that have aid agencies and humanitarian organizations working in Colombia.

“One of the recommendations that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has repeatedly set forth is that there must be guarantees for the legitimate work of human rights advocates,” he pointed out.

“We NGOs remain willing to dialogue with the government, which is a right that we demanded and gained over years of effort,” he said.

“It is the government that has cut off the channels of communication and has created conditions which make continued dialogue unlikely in the future,” Gallón added.

Farmers and indigenous united in Venezuela

By Alex Contreras Baspineiro

Cochabamba, Bolivia, Sept. 14— In an expression of solidarity with Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, indigenous and peasant farmer leaders from across the continent, and representatives from other countries of the world, will gather Oct. 11-14 in Caracas, Venezuela. The meeting is intended to strengthen the struggles against globalization, consolidate a bloc to fight for a better future, and unite forces against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In a meeting held this month in Caracas, indigenous and campesino leaders Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Alegría of Honduras, Blanca Chancoso of Ecuador, Egidio Brunetto of Brazil, Juan Tiney of Guatemala, Braulio Alvarez and Nicia Maldonado of Venezuela, among others, decided to call for the October meeting to converge the social struggles of the continent.

Juan Tiney, of the Latin American Farmer Organizations Board (CLOC, in its Spanish initials) said that peasant farmers and indigenous peoples are not objects, as neoliberal economic policies treat them, but, rather, are their own subjects, and as such have a right to participate in decisions that affect them. Egidio Brunetto of the landless “Sin Tierra” Movement (MST, in its Portuguese initials) of Brazil, said that land, water, and agricultural products are not merchandise, but, rather, resources that must be preserved to succeed at positive development. And Blanca Chancoso of the Ecuador Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE, in its Spanish initials) said that “land is life” and must thus be defended by all the peoples together.

For his part, Braulio Álvarez of the National “Exequiel Zamora” Agrarian Board (CANEZ) in Venezuela, said that unity in diversity is necessary to confront the policies imposed by the World Trade Organization and the FTAA. Rafael Alegría of “Via Campesina” (“Farmer’s Path”) said that one cannot speak of a fight against poverty without the redistribution of lands and food sovereignty. Finally, Evo Morales, Bolivian congressman and coca grower leader, said that the fight to defend the land must now include the resources of the land, including the soil, subsoil, and aerial space above it.

An invitation to unity

The invitation to the “International Gathering of Resistance and Solidarity with Farmers and Indigenous Peoples” states:

“We will soon commemorate the date that resistance by the original peoples began: 511 years ago one of the most terrible exterminations in the history of humanity began, and since then the story has been written in our indigenous blood, with our suffering, our misery, our exclusion and abandonment.

“They want us to leave our millenarian cultures, languages, beliefs, and wisdom, in order to be subjected to another, foreign and distant, one. They kick us off our lands, the essence of our life itself. And this practice of imposition and denial has been, essentially, always the same, denying our repressed peoples our own identity.

“Today, in Venezuela, winds of deep change are blowing. The people have begun to write their own story, become captains of their own destiny, and have forever broken the silence under which they were imposed. Indigenous rights are, today, part of the Constitution. The delivery of lands to the original and ancestral owners, to achieve food sovereignty, is today the government’s policy and the essence of a new democracy. We, the people of the world, state our profound solidarity with these winds that cross borders, blowing over the Andes, the Amazon, the high plains, and arriving at destinations far from the Southern Cone of our continent.

“This force that advances cannot be detained. It pushes us to meet with each other and with our brothers and sisters. It fills us with hope for new horizons that we are constructing. And it marks a new path that we must walk, a call to heal wounds, to come out from under our millenarian debt with our indigenous peoples and the farmlands.

“As part of this process that we consider vital for indigenous peoples and peasant farmers of our hemisphere and of the world, we invite you to meet on Venezuelan land for the October 12th commemoration, the official date, in this country, celebrating the resistance by oppressed peoples.

“New threats and challenges are in front of us that we must confront together, as the one people that we are, in order to have more strength in our actions. We are called upon to rescue the Bolivarian and ancestral ideal of Latin American unity, that which goes beyond mere economies and that was born in the hearts of our peoples.

“That’s why we invite all the indigenous peoples and peasant farmers of the world to reunite on October 11, 12, 13, and 14, on Venezuelan land, the country of Guaicaipuró and of Ezequiel Zamora, to set our sights on strengthening the struggle against neoliberal globalization, against FTAA, the IMF, the WTO, and any other form of imperialism, and in favor of the land, the seeds, the forests, the food, the culture, the water, and the natural elements, the essences of life itself, and in favor of a series of proposals that come from our bases, the eternally excluded, and to promote concrete actions that demonstrate that a different world is possible.”

“We Globalize the Fight! We Globalize Hope!”

Source: Narco News Bulletin

Giuliani’s Mexico City game: A story of fear, power, and money

Analysis by Noah Friedsky

Sept. 11— New York City, 1993: Citizens of the largest city in the United States live in fear of a seemingly endless crime wave. Violent attacks on evening joggers, frequent shootings and constant muggings, leading sensationally on the evening news, have city residents on edge. The nation freshly remembers its last President, George Bush, proclaiming that he will “end the scourge of drugs” and crack cocaine that he says is sweeping inner cities and turning parks into war zones. The city’s federal prosecutor, Rudolph Giuliani, runs for mayor and is elected on a promise to make life safe for New Yorkers.

Mexico City, 2003: Residents of America’s largest metropolis live in fear of kidnappings, rape, and murder. A city perceived by the foreign press as “lacking rule of law” stumbles through another decade of the “drug war” with crime on the rise. Enter Rudy Giuliani to bring his crime fighting expertise to Mexico City’s embattled residents – many of whom call themselves Chilangos.

The formula is largely the same, except that this time Giuliani wasn’t elected. He was not hired by any public agency or official. His consulting firm, Guiliani Partners LLC, was hired by a group of private business interests led by Carlos Slim, Mexico’s richest man, for a stated price tag of $4.3 million. But when Giuliani Partners announced its 146 recommendations of how to fight crime in the nation’s capital, Mexico City’s police chief and mayor hailed the recommendations and announced they would adopt every single one.

The whole process had the look of a well-orchestrated show: in January, Giuliani toured Mexico City’s toughest neighborhoods, surrounded by 300 bodyguards (as one journalist asked me, “Does he walk around New York that way?”); in early August, the city government appeared with the Giuliani recommendations in hand, confident that Mexico City would follow in the footsteps of New York City’s reportedly historic crime rate drop. By September, Mexico’s downtown historical district already sported new video cameras and mounted police monitoring the streets.

Underneath the gleam of new police uniforms and in the backrooms of business suites used for triumphant press conferences exists a more complex reality.

The story in New York

Giuliani brought “zero tolerance” policing to New York City with great fanfare and statistical success. Attacking low-level crimes like panhandling, noisy clubs, and pot smoking, Giuliani sought to destroy what he called a “culture of crime.” Under his watch, crime purportedly dropped nearly 60 percent and the city’s image brightened as Times Square and other popular spots were cleansed of “unseemly elements” such as homeless people and strip clubs.

As with most instant success stories, there were costs. Those stories made for less splashy headlines: young men of color routinely searched and harassed for daring to walk the streets, overcrowded prisons filled with non-violent drug offenders, families of those prisoners left without fathers, mothers abandoned by a welfare system gutted as police budgets grew, indigent defendants virtually guaranteed conviction as Giuliani waged war on public defenders, who are supposed to be paid to provide competent counsel to the accused. Only later, after Giuliani’s exit from City Hall, have these effects begun to seep into the headlines, as prisoners are proven innocent by DNA evidence after serving a decade in prison and as a culture of police, power, and immunity has since been revealed through historic acts of police brutality like the torture of Abner Louima.

Only now are New Yorkers feeling the effects of a regime that spent freely — in a “crime war” against non-violent offenders — during a recession. Today the city treads water with an $8 billion budget shortfall, social services slashed, more homeless families on the streets, and with no end to the costly “drug war” in sight. Little matter that during Giuliani’s term crime was plummeting throughout the United States as well, the simple fact of lowered crime rates continues to give life to an illusion of a Mr. Fix-it: crime fighting as a powerful narcotic for a people in dire straights.

Who is on this bandwagon?

Pepe Martinez, a nationally syndicated Mexican columnist and author of the definitive biographies on two of Mexico’s richest men, Carlos Slim and Carlos Hank González, told Narco News that the Mexican side of this story can be traced back to Sept. 11, 2001. As Giuliani began his political resurrection as the stand-in Commander in Chief, Carlos Slim donated large sums to aid New York. Little more than a year later, with Giuliani in private-money-making mode, and considered on the short list of future Republican presidential hopefuls, Carlos Slim offered him $4.3 million to lend Mexico City a hand.

Interestingly, Mexico City’s left wing mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution Party soon joined his Police Commissioner Marcelo Ebrard in welcoming Giuliani’s report.

The story in Mexico City

Originally promised for January, 2003, the Giuliani report did not arrive until August. Raul Fraga is a journalist and professor who has studied crime in the United States and Mexico since the 1980’s.

Fraga said the report is basically the re-application, with a few modifications, of Giuliani’s famed “zero tolerance” strategy from New York, which itself was copied from George Kelling’s 1980’s “No More Broken Windows” study. Kelling’s thesis held that by cracking down on low-level crimes, a respect for authority would develop, eradicating an incipient “culture of crime.” Giuliani recently denied that he subscribes to “zero tolerance” measures for Mexico City, but his report notes that small crimes should be made a priority: “They should respect and comply with the law, which includes simple actions like obeying traffic signals and not offering bribes to police officers.” Indeed, the report calls for harsh drug penalties in drug free school zones, for eliminating prostitution on the streets, for anti-graffiti and anti-noise police units, and for a crackdown on the informal economy of squeegee men, street children who perform magic tricks for pesos, and frenaleros who watch over parked cars for a few pesos.

While the report also calls for reorganizing the police force, combating corruption, and revising the criminal justice system, the Mexican public quickly jumped on the recommendations carrying the most immediate consequences: crackdowns on “quality of life” crimes. As squeegee-man Israel Jorge Peralta, 17, told the New York daily Newsday, “If they put me in jail for this, who will feed my family? Why should I be punished for trying to earn money honestly when there are no jobs?” Human rights groups denounced the move to criminalize the city’s more than 20,000 homeless children, without offering adequate alternatives. Perhaps the most significant challenge came from Mexico City’s District Attorney Bernardo Batíz Vásquez, who declared to reporters that some of the recommendations run contrary to the Mexican Constitution.

How – experts and everyday Chilangos want to know – does Giuliani think he can export strategies tailored for New York’s well-financed and modern police force to the Mexican city of the legendary “mordita,” a systemized bribery of under-paid police? Not to mention the challenge of projecting a crime-fighting approach built for New York onto a city with a vastly different socio-economic mix? “Whatever the differences in culture, background and laws, the objective for all decent societies is absolutely the same, and that is protection and safety: the single most important human right,” Giuliani told the Guardian of London.

In impoverished Mexico City, the buying power of wages has fallen steadily over the past decade, and much of Mexico City’s population is not formally employed. The English language press – from AP to Newsday to alternative papers like the Village Voice – speak of skyrocketing crime and regale us with stories of “express kidnappings.” This trend in which taxi passengers are forced to empty their ATM accounts by drivers holding them prisoner is not new and effects only the minority of Chilangos who have ATM cards. These papers say that there are 500-600 crimes reported daily, but that criminologists believe that these make up only 10 percent of actual crimes committed. Most crimes do indeed go unreported because Chilangos seem to have more fear of policemen than faith in them. Policemen routinely pad their low wages with bribe money.

Many Chilangos worry that while crime may or may not go down, giving the police broader powers may lead to increased abuses by the police. At a recent meeting in response to the Giuliani report, called by a local drug legalization group, the Mexican Association for Cannabis Studies, David Rodriguez worried, “The police are going to begin to act tougher, because they will feel they have more moral power. Even if some of these recommendations don’t pass, the cops are going to perceive this new approach.” Ignacio Saiz of Amnesty International agreed in a recent Village Voice article, saying, “Zero tolerance encourages police to act on their instincts, including their discriminatory instincts.”

According to Fraga, Mexican security experts who have studied crime in Mexico for decades believe that the Giuliani plan does not make a convincing case that it can be an effective model to resolve the high delinquency in Mexico City. Journalist Carlos Ramirez compares the approach to what happens in the movies, saying officials are going after the most visible criminals while ignoring the mafias responsible for the major crimes and forgetting about the society’s structural problems that cause the high crime rate. These observers speak of a “spectacular show” being staged, one that creates an illusion of action and safety, but is constructed in a way that impedes delivery of its promises.

Behind the curtain

These pessimistic analyses beg a response. But the main protagonists have avoided engaging in a democratic public discourse: either choosing silence or simply endorsing the report one hundred percent.

Fraga, the crime-fighting analyst, sees the private-sector sponsored Giuliani recommendations as part of an ideological project centering on quality of life improvements in Mexico City’s more upscale neighborhoods: a wider strategy with ancestral roots, which seeks to raise property values for real estate speculators and to push others – workers and the poor – to the margins. This may sound familiar to residents – former as well as current – of many of Manhattan’s recently gentrified neighborhoods.

Indeed, numerous Mexican analysts stressed to Narco News that the Giuliani report cannot be viewed by itself, that it is not a coincidental or isolated development. Behind all the glitter and talk about “fighting crime,” there is big money – and political power – to be made by the strange bedfellows who have brought the Giuliani project to Mexico City.

Source: Narco News

US killing of eight Iraqi police fuels anger in troubled town

By Rory McCarthy

Fallujah, Iraq, Sept. 13— The US military reignited tension in one of Iraq’s most troubled towns yesterday when its troops mistakenly shot dead eight policemen who were chasing a car full of suspected bandits.

American military officials were at a loss last night to explain why their soldiers opened fire with heavy machines guns on the officers, who were in two clearly marked Iraqi police cars in the town of Fallujah.

As well as the eight who died, four other policemen were injured. Their patrol cars had their sirens on and their warning lights flashing as they chased the suspects through the center of town early yesterday. As the vehicles passed in front of a US military base American tanks opened fire without warning.

The suspect car, a dark BMW believed to be carrying several gunmen, disappeared untouched by the shooting.

Police officers described how they pleaded with the soldiers to stop firing as their colleagues died around them.

A Jordanian security guard on duty at a Jordanian-funded hospital opposite the US base was also killed. Four other guards outside the hospital were injured and the buildings were seriously damaged by heavy American shelling.

In a separate incident in another troubled Sunni town near Fallujah, two US troops were killed and seven others were injured during a raid in Ramadi. The US authorities refused to elaborate on the operation. Many in Fallujah are already fiercely critical of the US military occupation, in part because they represent the small Sunni community that prospered under Saddam Hussein and has now lost its influence.

Even those who welcomed the fall of the Iraqi dictator lost any sympathy for the US troops after they opened fire on a crowd of unarmed protesters in Fallujah in May, killing 18 people and leaving at least 70 injured.

At Fallujah’s main hospital yesterday Abdul Kader Jasim, 30, stood at the bedside of one of his wounded colleagues as he described how the two cars were attacked. The men were part of a uniformed Iraqi protection force working alongside the police with the knowledge and support of the US military.

Jasim, a non-commissioned police officer, was driving the first of the two police patrol cars, a blue and white saloon car marked clearly with a police sign. The cars were on a routine patrol when they took a call on their radio at around 1:30 am telling them to search for the suspect BMW.

Gunmen in the car had fired at the main police station in the town and drove off into the night. “The Americans knew very well that we have patrols on these roads every night,” Jasim said. “We had our lights flashing and our siren on as we went past the American base. But they put their spotlights on us and then they started shooting us. We shouted at them: ‘We are police. We are police.’ But they just kept on shooting — at our engines, our tires, the glass, the doors.”

Eight policemen in the second car, a pick-up, were killed instantly. Two others in the car were seriously injured. The shooting lasted at least 30 minutes. “This is so very wrong,” Jasim said. “These people are asking us to provide security and then they are killing us.”

The US military refused to discuss the incident and issued a statement saying only that one US soldier and five “neutral individuals” were injured in an attack near the Jordanian hospital in Fallujah. The statement said US troops were attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire. Outside the hospital yesterday lay empty shells from heavy machine gun rounds. There were bullet holes in the main building and a two-story block to one side was badly damaged.

By late yesterday no US officer had appeared at the main police station in Fallujah to apologize or explain what had happened. Lieutenant Ayad Dulaimi, 25, said policing in Fallujah had become increasingly difficult because people associated the police with the US military. “We are filled with grief for our dead colleagues,” he said. “The fact there has been no apology only adds fuel to the fire.”

Soruce: Guardian (UK)

Iranian rep. denounces US ‘appetite for vengence’

By Rupert Cornwell

Washington, DC, Sept. 13— A showdown over Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons ambitions moved closer yesterday when the United Nations’ (UN) atomic watchdog agency handed Tehran a seven-week deadline to co-operate. The Iranian delegation staged an angry walkout in response.

Ending a week-long meeting in Geneva, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) demanded that Iran offer “accelerated co-operation” so uncertainties over its nuclear program could be cleared by the end of October.

The agency also urged Tehran to fulfill its reporting obligations under the statutes of the IAEA, of which Iran is a member, and to suspend all uranium enrichment operations. This includes the shipment of nuclear materials to the Natanz plant south of Tehran, where inspectors this year found traces of weapons-grade enriched uranium. Tehran insists its nuclear programs are for generating electricity and says its equipment was “contaminated” by a previous owner.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA chief, toured Iran’s nuclear facilities in February, including the incomplete plant in Natanz. He was said to be dismayed by the advanced stage of a project using hundreds of centrifuges to enrich uranium.

ElBaradei expressed confidence that Iran would comply with the agency before he reports to the board at its next meeting in November. He said: “[The board] is sending a very powerful message to Iran that they need to co-operate fully and immediately and show complete transparency.”

The IAEA’s decision raises the real prospect of Security Council action against Iran, including sanctions, if the clerical regime does not comply before the November meeting.

Last night that seemed the most likely outcome, after Ali Akbar Salehi, the chief Iranian representative to the board, used the walkout to launch a fierce denunciation of the US.

Salehi said the pressure was part of Washington’s grand design to remake the Middle East. Nothing would satisfy the US’s “appetite for vengeance”, short of confrontation and war.

He said: “It is no secret that the [Bush administration] entertains the idea of invasion of yet another territory, as they aim to re-engineer and reshape the entire Middle East region.”

Salehi said that Iran would review its co-operation with the UN agency in light of the resolution. Kenneth Brill, the chief US delegate to the IAEA, said of the threat: “I think that suggests they have something to hide that they do not want to come to light.”

Washington has pressed for UN sanctions since 2002, when George Bush included Iran alongside Iraq and North Korea in an “axis of evil.” This time it failed to secure an explicit threat from the IAEA. But Iran’s behavior has convinced many US allies it is secretly developing nuclear weapons.

Israel is watching closely too. In 1981 Israel destroyed the Osirak reactor near Baghdad, the centerpiece of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program.



Source: Independent (UK)

Mussolini wasn’t that bad, says Berlusconi

By John Hooper

Rome, Italy, Sept. 12— Even some of Silvio Berlusconi’s own supporters and allies were last night squirming with embarrassment at their leader’s latest extraordinary gaffe.

In an interview published yesterday by the Spectator, Italy’s prime minister appeared to defend the actions of his country’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.

“Mussolini never killed anyone,” the magazine quoted him saying.

“Mussolini sent people on holiday to confine them [banishment to small islands such as Ponza and Maddalena which are now plush resorts].”

Italy’s fascist leader ordered the brutal 1935-36 occupation of Ethiopia, led Italy into the second world war and headed a Nazi puppet government which rounded up and dispatched Italian Jews to Hitler’s concentration camps.

Coming from a prime minister who relies heavily on the hard right, “post-fascist” National Alliance, Berlusconi’s comments touched a hyper-sensitive nerve in a country whose postwar democracy was founded on an anti-fascist consensus. It raised for the first time since his return to power two years ago the issue of how long his more moderate allies can afford to support him without losing their credibility.

There was a near-apoplectic reaction from the leftwing opposition. Senator Cesare Salvi, of the formerly communist Democratic Left, called Berlusconi’s remarks “genuinely disgraceful.” He said Mussolini’s victims “cried out for vengeance.”

Some of Berlusconi’s supporters defended his remark, expressed in the context of a comparison with Saddam Hussein.

One leading member of his party tried to excuse it on the grounds that it was not an “official phrase.” But others made no attempt to hide their dismay.

“I don’t want to believe that the prime minister made the comments on fascism reported by the news agencies,” said Giorgio La Malfa, leader of the small Republican party, which backs Berlusconi’s government.

“The fascist dictatorship was a ferocious one that killed and lethally wounded its leading political opponents.”

In a further, clear rebuke to the prime minister, Luca Volonté, parliamentary leader of the Christian Democrat Union, an important component of Berlusconi’s governing coalition, said: “Anti-fascism is a value that unites. It unites the majority [in parliament]. It unites the government with the opposition. It unites the country. To split over that which unites is senseless.”

The head of Italy’s Jewish community, Amos Luzzatto, said he was “not surprised. Just saddened.”

The prime minister’s comment appeared in the second set of extracts from an interview which had already caused sparks to fly last week.

In the first part, Berlusconi was quoted as saying that Italy’s judges were “mentally disturbed” and “anthropologically different” from other people.

But it was also the latest in a long line of intensely controversial remarks from a leader who only this week declared that he had no intention of being “politically correct.”

In July, he opened a bitter rift with Berlin by telling a German MEP he reminded him of a concentration camp guard.

Mussolini’s biographer, Dennis Mack Smith, said the Italian fascist leader was not a murderer on the scale of Hitler or Stalin but “had absolutely no compunction in having people killed.”

Source: Guardian (UK)