WIFE’S PRESS CONFERENCE MAKES FANFANI RESIGN

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30946, 30 December 1965, Page 9

WIFE’S PRESS CONFERENCE MAKES FANFANI RESIGN

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) ROME, Dec. 29. The resignation of Professor Amintore Fanfani as Italian Minister sent waves of controversy rippling on the Italian political scene, the Associated Press reported.

Professor Fanfani submitted his resignation in Rome yesterday to dissociate himself from anti-American remarks made at a Rome party given by his wife, Bianca Rosa, and not attended by himself.

The remarks were attributed to a former mayor, Mr Giorgio La Pira of Florence, Professor Fanfani’s friend and fellow Christian Democrat who recently conveyed a purported North Vietnamese peace feeler. Professor Fanfani reported to the United States govern-

ment on Mr La Pira’s peace soundings in Hanoi. The Italian Right Wing raised an outcry against Professor Fanfani’s action, taken when he was at once Italian Foreign Minister and president of the United Nations General Assembly. Reuter reported the Italian Treasury Minister, Mr Emilio Colombo was thought most likely to take over as Italian Foreign Minister. Little Doubt

Professor Fanfani has left little doubt that he would stick to his decision in spite of an appeal from the Prime Minister, Mr Aldo Moro, that he should reverse it. Also figuring in events

leading directly to the Fanfani resignation was Mrs Gianna Preda, a senior member of one of the journals which had most fiercely attacked the Foreign Minister for his Vietnam peace efforts. Mrs Fanfani is understood to have invited both Mr La Pira and Mrs Preda to the

Fanfani home while her husband was away in New York. The woman journalist later published indiscreet revelations in her journal, quoting Mr La Pira as criticising Mr Moro as “soft,” and as saying that American Secretary of State Dean Rusk “knows nothing and understands little.” In his evidently embar-

rassed letter of resignation, Professor Fanfani dissociated himself from the “unjust and unfounded considerations and judgments by a friend and an improvident initiative by a family member.” Discreet Silence In Washington today, the United States Government maintained a discreet silence on the Fanfani resignation. Professor Fanfani spent almost three hours with the Secretary of State (Mr Dean Rusk), afterwards announcing that he had merely been authorised to say the United States Government “appreciated” his efforts in Vietnam.

Presumably Mr Rusk wished to go no further because the United States had always regarded the Vietnamese probe spearheaded by Mr La Pira as ambiguous.