Pope plot ‘played down’

Press, 14 December 1982, Page 8

Pope plot ‘played down’

NZPA-Reuter Rome The Socialist leader, Bettino Traxi, attacked his Christian Democratic coalition partners yesterday for playing down allegations that Bulgarian agents plotted to kill Pope John Paul. The attempted assassination in May last year was not the work of an “isolated killer, as had been clear from the outset,” Mr Craxi said in the party newspaper “Avanti.” “Nor is it merely a sus-

picion against Bulgarian citizens, as a tiresome and ultra diplomatic .statement from the ■ Foreign Ministry implies,” The Foreign Minister, Mr Emilio Colombo, and the Interior Minister, Mr Virginio Rognoni, both Christian Democrats, have said that the Government could not take more decisive action as the judicial inquiry into the shooting was still in progress. Mr Colombo has recalled

the Italian Ambassador in Sofia to discuss relations with Bulgaria in the light of the arrest in Rome of a Bulgarian suspected of complicity in the attack on the Pope. Foreign Ministry sources said that the move showed the serious effect the arrest of an airline official Sergei Antonov, and an arrest warrant issued for a former Bulgarian military attache were having on relations between the two countries.