A cruel anniversary

Thirty years ago today, in the trunk of a car parked in Rome's Via Caetani, the body of Aldo Moro was discovered, with 10 rounds of bullets in it.

The killers were the Red Brigades, an ultra-left terrorist group, who had kidnapped Mr Moro 55 days previously after murdering his five guards. Everything about the abduction and subsequent assassination of the top Christian Democrat (DC) politician was executed with venomous symbolism. He was kidnapped while on his way to Parliament to participate in a historic occasion: the approval of a DC government with the support of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) - an achievement that owed as much to Mr Moro's "opening to the Left" as to Communist leader Enrico Berlinguer's policy of "historic compromise".

After he was killed, the car holding Mr Moro's corpse was parked equidistant between the DC and PCI headquarters inVia Caetani.

The killers could not have known it, but they killed Mr Moro on the day that, seven years later, the European Community chose to be Europe Day. There is something grimly congruent about the coincidence.

Although Mr Moro's career flourished in Italy - he was twice Prime Minister and was entrusted with several senior ministerial portfolios - there was a profoundly European dimension to his work.

Within the DC he represented the "current" that paid most attention to the development of a social market, which came to be a central feature of the centrist politics that characterised the European Community.

In Italy, whose post-war politics were defined by the strategy to keep the PCI out of government, Mr Moro came to believe, by the 1970s, that his country's progress depended on the PCI being co-opted into a government of national unity. Famously, he called the process of rapprochement one of "parallel convergences" - an impossibility in mathematical space but one that, in the political space created by Mr Moro and Mr Berlinguer, came increasingly to seem possible.

Had the strategy succeeded, the effects would have rippled far beyond Italy - into Europe, then divided and wracked by the Cold War. Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State, told Mr Moro that he had to abandon his plan or else "pay dearly for it". Whether that warning was meant to be personally menacing is a subject of controversy but there is no doubt that Mr Moro's vision of Europe made him many enemies.

The Cold War also saw Mr Moro involved, behind the scenes, in the 1972 negotiations between Dom Mintoff's government and the UK government led by Edward Heath over the British military bases in Malta. Mr Moro was then Italy's Foreign Minister and concerned about the negotiations, fearing that if they failed Malta might become very hostile to western Europe.

It is said that the naming of a major arterial road in Marsa after Mr Moro was a token of Mr Mintoff's gratitude for his intervention. For other reasons, Mr Moro was also regarded with much admiration by an emerging group of Christian Democrat politicians in the Nationalist Party, one of whose delegations was received by Mr Moro shortly before his death.

Clearly this is a statesman whose legacy continues to deserve evaluation. Hence, the Academy for the Development of a Democratic Environment (AŻAD), which I chair, and The Strickland Foundation, in collaboration with the Italian Embassy, is holding a round table discussion: Aldo Moro - Italo-Maltese Relations And The European Legacy.

We will have four speakers who can illuminate the issues thanks to their personal involvement, apart from their distinguished political experience. From the Maltese side, there are the former Presidents of the Republic Guido de Marco and Ugo Mifsud Bonnici. From the Italian side, there are Senator Francesco Cossiga, former President of the Italian Republic and Minister of Hoem Affairs when Mr Moro was kidnapped, and Rocco Buttiglione, deputy Speaker of the Italian Chamber of Deputies.

The round table will be held on May 16 at the Auberge d'Aragon, in Valletta. Drinks will be served at 5.30 p.m. with the discussion, which will be conducted in Italian, commencing at 6 p.m. It is open to the public.

Seating is limited. Places may be reserved by calling 2124 7515/2123 4884 or by emailing info@azad-malta.com.