The Andreotti Case

...He remains outwardly unshaken, though, and shows no signs of doing so...

...Natta, by contrast, has never been a warm supporter of Berlin-guer's "historic compromise," and has not wasted any time showing his hand...

...This final parliamentary maneuver in the Andreotti case will be the most dangerous episode of the entire affair for the Craxi coalition...

...In this theory, Andreotti was too good a target to be passed up, and the Communist motion against him was the opening salvo of the campaign...

...The PCI's decision to rescue Andreotti, widely interpreted as a reward for his September 13 observations, also seemed a harbinger of Communist support for his presidential aspirations...

...His main goal, says Sanza, is to divide the DC from its Socialist and Center-Left partners...

...As Spini sees it, Natta is very different from the "government-minded" Berlinguer...

...Meanwhile, the political world is trying to make sense of the PCI's sudden hard line...

...In Parliament only formal votes of confidence are conducted in the open...

...To fully appreciate the nuances of the new Andreotti case, and of Italian politics today, one has to go back to September 13...

...He was labeled Sindona's supreme protector, even though two years ago a legislative committee of inquiry chaired by an opponent, Left-wing Socialist Francesco De Martino, found no evidence to support such suspicions...

...Almost certainly, it has eliminated him as a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in 1985...

...More than once accused of arrogant carelessness in choosing lieutenants and shielding dubious associates, Andreotti owes his latest troubles to the long-running national inquiry into the misdeeds of Michele Sindona...

...Even in his toughest moments, Berlinguer refrained from virulent attacks against the DC or its prominent figures...

...One motion demanded Andreotti's immediate resignation...

...On that date the Foreign Minister was a special guest at the Festival of L 'Unita, an impressive two-week cultural and propaganda extravaganza organized by the Communist Party (PCI) newspaper...

...Most observers believe that the Communists' strategy has changed fundamentally under Natta...

...CHALLENGE TO A SURVIVOR The Andreotti Case BY SILVIO R SENIGALLIA Rome Witty, urbane, cynical Giulio Andreotti, Italy's Christian Democratic (DC) Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister, has been compared in subtlety and demeanor to an 18th-century prelate...

...Shortly after Natta's belligerent announcement, the Communists submitted a motion in the Senate that was virtually identical to the one they had helped defeat in the Chamber on October 4. Accusations were followed by counter accusation, and soon relations between the two major parties plummeted to a new low...

...it will need all the cohesion it can muster to repel an opposition reinforced by the snipers' backstabbing...

...Some newspapers maintain that the PCI's about-face has a tactical rather than strategic inspiration...

...Rome's Center-Right daily II Messaggero, for example, contends that Natta is preparing for next June's nationwide administrative elections by exploiting the widespread malaise resulting from many scandals involving people in high places and well-publicized stories linking politicians to organized crime...

...at least 50 deputies belonging to parties within the coalition voted against the Foreign Minister...

...Valdo Spini, a former Socialist vice secretary general, basically concurs...

...That former titan of Vatican and Italian banking circles, currently imprisoned in New York for offenses connected with the $400 million failure of the Franklin Savings Bank, was briefly returned to Italy this past September...

...A member of virtually every postwar Cabinet, he once said that power wears out only those who lack it...

...inantly Communist audience and drew praise from Moscow...

...Since his remarks in effect endorsed the Kremlin's views on the permanent validity of the Yalta agreement, they were favorably received by the predomSilvio F. Senigallia reports regularly for The New Leader from Rome...

...Alessandro Natta, chosen as the PCI's secretary general this summer to replace the late Enrico Berlinguer, thundered that Andreotti should indeed resign and that the whole succession of postwar DC-controlled governments must come to an end...

...he regards himself strictly as an opposition leader and wants to promote a "bipolarism of impotence" that would simply make any coalition impossible...

...Yet 24 hours later, the party made a sensational, and still confusing, about-face...

...Angelo Sanza, a Left-wing Christian Democrat who is very close to DC Secretary General Ciriaco De Mita, suggests that Natta is not interested in sharing power...

...He was interrogated about his alleged ties to the Sicilian Mafia, his involvement in the high-level intrigues of a secret Masonic lodge called P-2 (Propaganda Due), and his role in the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano, whose president, Roberto Calvi, died mysteriously under London's Black friars Bridge...

...On October 4 the Chamber of Deputies, Italy's lower house, debated several motions relating to Sindona, including the one asking for Andreotti's ouster made by the aggressive, ultralib-eral, small Radical Party...

...He admitted that it was high time for Andreotti, a veteran of almost four decades in office and a source of anguish both for the DC and the Socialists, to quit public life...

...While this was taking place, the opposition parties in Parliament introduced motions attacking ministerial laxity on the "moral question...

...Aware that Andreotti's removal under fire would topple the Cabinet and create a major crisis, the DC's unhappy allies had to fall in line behind the beleaguered Foreign Minister...

...Ideally, Andreotti would resign himself...

...then an official clarification of sorts was issued and the brouhaha died down...

...Friction between the PCI and the Christian Democrats occasionally pushed him back to a "Leftist alternative" policy, but he felt deeply that Italy could be made governable only if a modus vivendi were somehow achieved...

...During a foreign-policy debate with PCI Senator Paolo Buf-alini, he condemned the resurgence of Pan-Germanism and declared that "there are now two German states and such they must remain...

...Claudio Martelli, the Socialist Party's deputy secretary general and Craxi's right-hand man, summarized their feelings...

...When Andreotti again captured the headlines three weeks later, the explosion had nothing to do with Teutonic matters...

...But he found the PCI's use of a vague moral charge for strictly political ends intolerable, especially in the light of the De Martino committee's conclusions...

...On the contrary, he has been buoyed up by the Senate's rejection of the PCI's motion...

...This enables the franchitiratori, the snipers, to secretly back the opposition with impunity...

...There is a further hurdle, however: At the end of November the PCI plans to press its motion in the Chamber of Deputies, where Nilde Jotti, the Communist president of the lower house, has already announced the vote will be by secret ballot...

...An embarrassed Craxi apologized to Kohl, but there was much irritation inside the Italian government at Andreotti's rather personal stewardship of the nation's foreign policy...

...Elsewhere they produced a big diplomatic flap...

...He was saved from that fate solely because the Communists abstained...

...But to the sorrow of his many admirers and the satisfaction of his equally numerous enemies, he now finds himself at the center of a storm that has tarnished his image and may end his long, successful career...

...The present DC-dominated coalition government led by Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, its predecessors, and especially the Christian Democratic Party were charged with tolerating rampant dishonesty in public life...

...West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, terming the statement "absolutely incomprehensible," called for an explanation...

...He seemed to be in real trouble...