The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 12

THE GUARDIAN Saturday January 8 1994 Dfialian right enters poll race divided 12 EUROPEAN NEWS The old Christian Democrat Party still commands a hefty religious vote and is seeking to re-launch itself as the Popular Party. But it is divided internally between a liberal wing which represents the old-fashioned Roman Catholic social conscience and a faction which has inherited the Neapolitan political machine. Desperate to play for time, the party and its three disgraced allies in the rump government told the prime minister, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, this week that they would only vote against a coining motion of no confidence if the election was postponed until June. The result was talk of a compromise on April 10 instead of March 20. A fourth constituency is that of the fascist leader Gianfanco Fini.

Since the elections, Mr Fini has been busy paving hom-mage to the graves of victims of Nazi massacres, and is relaunching the National Alliance as a broader rightwing group than the MSI. There are obvious difficulties in uniting the statist Mr Fini with the Thatcherite Mr Segni or the separatist Mr Bossi. But the re-formed fascists command a strong base in Rome and the south, and Mr Fini said yesterday: "Without us, the rightwing axis will lose." in 18th-century Russian army uniform fire an 18th-century cannon yesterday to celebrate the Russian Orthodox Christmas PHOTOGRAPH SERGEI KARPUKHIN press shows its might against price decree New grouping is blocked by personal and political rifts, writes Ed Vulliamy DTALY-S right wing began its advance on the spring election this week, with the free-marketeer Mano Scgni confirming for the first time yesterday that he wil put himself forward as prime minister. Italy will hold this election on a first-past-the-post system largely because of referendums moved by Mr Segni But the right is finding it hard to form the bloc necessary to confront the more organised alliances around the ex-communist Left Democrats (PDS). The right enters the fray as a number of interests divided by personal and political differences.

The mass media mogul Silvio Berlusconi is making a tempestuous entry into politics by dealing frantically with each in pursuit of an alliance against the left. The dilemma on Italy's right wing is that the traditions of the old Christian Democrat party are those of the strong state, built on corrupt patronage and a huge public sector. Mario Segni is challenging this tradition from the right with his own political grouping, the Pact for Italy. He is an opportunist who has offered alliances to almost every political party over the past year, including the PDS. whom he now reviles.

He is coy about becoming part of Mr Berlusconi's axis, but is known to be in close contact with him, and would probably be the preferred prime minister. Although he has no electoral base, Mr Segni is the darling of the establishment and business community. He presents himself as a liberal anti-statist, although his free-market views place him firmly on the European right wing. Yesterday he said clearly for the first time: "I shall be a candidate for the premiership." The second main force is the Northern League, which has formidable power in the northern industrial centres. Mr Berlusconi had dinner with the Northern League leader, Umberto Bossi this week, for the first time.

Sources in the league say the two men all but agreed on the league's willingness to co-operate with Mr Berlusconi. But it has been a difficult week for Mr Bossi, whose party has risen to power largely thanks to its lily-white image, but who has been personally named as having solicited an illegal payment of 100.000 from the Ferruzzi group, part of the energy Enimont venture whose directors are currently on trial for paying out massive bribes. Mr Bossi said in court that the payment was "a matter of survival" and a unique case, but sources say that Mr Berlusconi was eager to ask Mr Bossi if the party was keeping any other skeletons in its closet. Christmas boom Muscovites Russia's David Hearst In Moscow THE prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, has averted a national press strike, due to start one day before the new parliament's first session, by promising negotiations on a controversial decree which would increase the price of newsprint and newspaper delivery six times. He said a special commission would be set up to draft proposals on the main problems faced by the press.

The cave-in follows an unprecedented show of force by the editors of 25 national news Bosnian papers, many of whom had been among President Yeltsin's strongest supporters. In a letter to Mr Yeltsin, they said the decree was "a blow against the freedom of speech" and hindered the Russian citizen's right, under the new con-sitution, to full informauon. The decree that caused the outcry had originally not been intended to target the press. It was an attempt to increase taxes paid by industry, by revaluing property on average 30 times. But newspapers reacted angrily after a year in which circulation and revenue from subscriptions plummeted.

war becomes Banquo's ghost at Nato summit ernment itself was responsible. "One of the politicians accused Moscow News and other newspapers of not warning society of the threat of Zhirinovsky. When we showed to this politician an edition in November, in which we pictured Zhirinovsky on the front page, he turned around and said we were advertising him," Mr Lo-shak wrote. Mr Yeltsin's first reaction to the election results was to change the head of Ostankino, the main state television channel. He then published a series of decrees trying to establish tighter control over the mass media.

tinued to shell Sarajevo and shell food convoys. Mr Zimmerman asked if Nato and the US were prepared to stand by that pledge. In a swift attempt at damage control, Clinton administration aides suggested that Mr Zimmerman had in fact resigned when the White House turned down the state department recommendation that Mr Zimmerman be promoted to assistant secretary of state for refugees, apparently because they want the post to go to a woman or to a member of a minority group. After the death of IS men of its force in the Balkans, France has called for a more assertive UN mission, opening an airport in the northern city of Tuzla for humanitarian flights and securing Serb-threatened Srebrenica. He replaced the press ministry and the Federal Information Centre both of which played a controversial part in the election campaign with two new bodies, the Committee of the Russian Federation on Press, and the Federal Service of Russia on Television and Radio Broadcast.

Both of these new bodies arc called in the decree "central bodies of federal power" in the decree. The decree said the heads of these bodies should have the status of a minister of the Russian republic, with corresponding privileges for housing, living and medical care. "To use arms to fulfil the mission seems to me normal and justified," President Franccois Mittcrraii.1 baid during his Uauuiunal new year's reception on Thursday. Asked about a possible US intervention, Mr Mitterrand said: "If there is air cover for the UN soldiers, why not?" He added: "How can we allow those soldiers to be targets of violence as they are today?" The United Nations said yesterday the secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was authorised by the security council to make the final decision on air strikes in Bosnia and "would not delegate that authority." It was commenting on a request by the French UN commander in Bosnia, General Jean Cot, for authority to call the first air strike. French calls for a bigger US Balkans commitment have given Berlusconi is dealing frantically with each group in hope of an alliance Mr Berlusconi has presented himself as pilot and saviour of the right, seeking to unite it under the garish banner of Forza Italia a soccer slogan.

While Berlusconi's commercial record is well known, his political pedigree is shadier. He was a close friend of the Socialist leader Bettino Craxi, whose squalid fiefdom has now tumbled into disgrace, and was on the list of members of the P2 Masonic Lodge which operates behind the scenes of Italian politics and was a significant player in the years of rightwing terrorism. Mr Berlusconi has personal reasons to fear a PDS govern ment: the left is committed to anti-trust legislation which would break up his vast empire of television and advertising. so tar it is the leu wtuch has reaped the political harvest of two years of tumult But the powerful traditional interests of Italy's political world are now pitched against the PUS. The managing director ot It aly's state energy company ENI, linked in a joint chemical venture with Enimont, has confirmed his group paid out some 500 billion lire in illicit funding.

Franco Bernabe said in court that firms in his group knowingly paid out the cash to a string of mysterious companies based in tax havens in a traudu-lent attempt to raise money for political parties. Clinton a big headache, writes Martin Walker in Washington The editors of pro-government newspapers such as Iz-vestia, Moscovsky Pravda, Kur-anty, and Rossiskaya Gazcta demanded in their letter cither a system of compensation, or a general exemption for both newspaper production and delivery. This is clearly their preferred option, as the government has continally used the subsidies it gives newspapers to influence the editorial line. Mr Yeltsin has lost the support he once enjoyed in the press as the democratic camp in general has become more divided after the storming of the White House and the last elec states affects the security of The French insistence on raising the Bosnian crisis has been reinforced in Washington by the unexpected intervention of two of Mr Clinton's senior foreign policy officials. The American ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, stunned by her visit to a mass grave in Serbian-occupied Croatia, vowed the US would never accept an amnesty for those guilty of war crimes, and that prosecution was "essential, an integral part of the peace process.

"The fact that people end up in something that is basically a garbage dump is sym superb savings with interest more than 600. or 24 months THE OBSERVER tions, and with the prospect of continuing economic decline. The most recent paper to defect is the official government newspaper, Rossiski Vesti. which in a front-page editorial announced its campaign to become independent The staff accused the government, its founder, of failing to accept criticism and of trying to remove the editor-in-chief. Former supporters of President Yeltsin, such as the editor of the weekly Moscow News, Viktor Lashak, wrote in the last edition that the media were blamed for the electoral success of the far nght populist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, when the gov bolic of the tragedies of this country and other parts of former said Ms Albright, the highest-ranking US official to visit the region since the war broke out 30 months ago.

And the former US ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmerman, resigned from the state department in what his friends said was a principled protest against US policy over Bosnia. Most recently the director of refugee programmes at the state department Mr Zimmerman is the fifth and by far the most senior US official to resign over policy in the Balkans. In a strong memo to the secretary of state, noting the renewed shelling of Sarajevo, Mr Zimmerman recalled that Nato had last August committed itself to bomb Serb forces if they con on too. free on SWANSEA VilW Wiv, 1 Lrujmkt. W.

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