Rome ignores journalist's plea
2005-02-16 20:14
Rome - The senate voted on Wednesday to extend Italy's troop deployment in Iraq through June, hours after the nation heard a wrenching, televised appeal by an Italian journalist held hostage in Iraq.
Giuliana Sgrena begged Italians to "put pressure on the government" for the withdrawal of troops.
The video, delivered anonymously to Associated Press Television News in Baghdad, was shown repeatedly on Italian networks.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition has a comfortable majority in the upper house of parliament, which voted by 141 to 112 to continue funding for some 3 000 Italian troops in Iraq.
The centre-left opposition was approaching the vote split over what to do.
Most opposition leaders said they were opposed to Italy's military presence in Iraq under present conditions, but a small group said it would abstain in the vote.
"Only in a radically new context, redefining the political context of the intervention, the nature the role and the aim of the mission, the chain of command and inevitably the rules of engagement, would our presence in Iraq find a meaning," said centre-left senator Willer Bordon, during final statements before the vote.
Italy's contingent is one of the largest contributors to the US-coalition.
"Who is asking us not to stay in Iraq? It is the terrorists who are asking," said Domenico Nania, a senator for government coalition partner National Allliance, said in his statement.
"What counts today is what is right for the Iraqi people and for this we have to show all our solidarity in this work of reconstruction."
- AP