From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Fw: [chicagodan] Protests Italy 200,000-300,000 as PM Meets Bush [The Hindu]
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 20:41:45 -0500


> http://mai.flora.org/forum/31228
>
> Protests Italy 200,000-300,000 as PM Meets Bush [The Hindu]
>
> From: "Janet M Eaton" <jeaton-AT-fox.nstn.ca>
> Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 12:02:39 -0300
>
> http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/03160007.htm
>
> The Hindu
> Tuesday, October 16, 2001
>
> Protests in Italy as PM meets Bush
>
> By Vaiju Naravane
>
> PARIS, OCT 15. In what has been described as the biggest
> demonstration of its kind in Italy for over a decade, an estimated
> 200,00 to 300,000 persons staged a peace walk from the cities of
> Perugia to Assisi. Bearing placards and banners saying Stop War!,
> the marchers, all along the 24-km stretch, shouted slogans and
> chanted anti-war songs to express their hostility to the current U.S.
> and British strikes against Afghanistan.
>
> The road they travelled is the same taken by Saint Francis of
> Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order. The peace march was
> created in 1961 by the Italian left during the height of the cold war.
> But not since the Cold War years have so many people joined it.
> The marchers were supported by the Roman Catholic Church. The
> marchers included many prominent Italians including Mr.
> Francesco Rutelli, who led the left-wing alliance in legislative
> elections earlier this year and former left wing Prime Minister, Mr.
> Massimo D'Alema. Not even during the Gulf War or the one in
> Kosovo did the peace march attract so many people.
>
> The march is an embarrassment to the Government of the
> conservative anti-communist Prime Minister, Mr. Silvio Berlusconi,
> who is in Washington today for talks with the U.S. President, Mr.
> George Bush.
>
> Mr. Berlusconi has been bending over backwards in his attempts to
> be useful to Washington. So far, most major European leaders
> have met Mr. Bush in Washington. Not so Mr. Berlusconi.
> Washington has now bowed to the intense pressure exerted by
> Rome and wearily agreed to a meeting. ``I want to tell President
> Bush that Italy is ready to do whatever its allies ask,'' Mr.
> Berlusconi told a Cabinet meeting prior to his departure.
>
> But Washington had so far turned a deaf ear to Italy's assertions of
> loyalty, especially after the Italian Premier committed the
> monumental gaffe of stating that Western civilisation was superior
> to that of the Islamic world.
>
> ``Why are the Americans doing this? We feel sorry for those who
> perished in the attacks against the World Trade Center and the
> perpetrators of these crimes must be punished. But what has the
> poor man in Afghanistan whose five year old boy has been killed to
> deserve the wrath of America? The U.S. must be made to
> understand that it cannot behave like a cowboy any more. It is U.S.
> policies of support to the Taliban and Pakistan and corrupt regimes
> like Saudi Arabia that has given us the likes of Osama bin Laden in
> the first place. Why does the U.S. not do its mea culpa about that
> ?'' asked a retired schoolteacher from Como who made the trip to
> Perugia.
>
> As the bombing of Afghanistan continues, there is growing
> resistance across Europe. The Greens and their allies
> demonstrated in Paris. Over 25,000 persons demonstrated in
> Germany and there were demonstrations in London as well.
>
> The French Health Minister, Mr. Bernard Kouchner, who was one of
> the founders of Medecins Sans Frontiers - the world's most
> respected medical NGO - and who was U.N. Administrator in
> Kosovo said in an interview: ``Is it good to bomb Afghanistan like
> this? Perhaps. But the campaign should now quickly move into
> phase two.'' A coalition government should be put into place in
> Kabul under the aegis of the United Nations, he urged.
>
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