Strategy of tension

["Michael Keaney" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Parties suspect one another over Italian bombing

Financial Times, Aug 24, 2001
By JO JOHNSON

A bomb exploded in an office of the rightwing Northern League in a small
town near Padua early
yesterday, less than a month after a courthouse was bombed in Venice.

The attacks have led some government members to claim that the country
is facing a campaign to
destabilise the new administration of Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister.


"The League had predicted these bombs," said Roberto Castelli, justice
minister and Northern League
politician. "They are terrorist acts against change." The night before
the bomb Umberto Bossi,
Northern League leader, was quoted as saying the left wanted to "profit
from terrorism in order to
reverse electoral results". Mr Berlusconi has spoken of a "worrying
escalation of violence" aimed at the
Italian government.

But others have suggested Italian intelligence services may be reviving
a "strategy of tension" - the term
given to suspected collusion between parts of the Italian state, fascist
terrorists and provocateurs in the
1970s - to discredit the left. Lawyers for the Genoa Social Forum, an
umbrella group for
anti-globalisation groups, say they have evidence of police-hooligan
links.

The inclusion in the government of the Northern League, once committed
to the break-up of the Italian
state, and of the National Alliance, with origins in Italy's fascist
past, has also been cited as a possible
cause of recent bombs.

Responsibility for the bomb in Venice and a fake one found last week at
Rome's busy Termini railway
station has been claimed by various groups, including at least one that
said it was a spin-off from the
Red Brigades, the militant group notorious for kidnapping and murdering
Aldo Moro, a former prime
minister, in 1978. Yesterday's bomb injured no-one.

Full article at:
http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?print=true&id=01
0824001617

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

michael.keaney@xxxxxx