Posted on 03/19/2002 5:06:14 PM PST by July 4th
A leading adviser to Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government in Italy was shot dead on Tuesday night in what appeared to be a political killing aimed at forcing ministers to abandon plans for labour market reform.
In an event that stunned the Italian political establishment, Marco Biagi, an economist who helped Mr Berlusconi draw up controversial reforms that are being opposed by Italian trade unions, was shot dead in the city of Bologna as he was returning home from work.
There was no immediate claim for the killing by any group. But police sources said they suspected the assassination was the work of terrorists, while the prosecutor general of Bologna indicated he thought the murder was tied to Mr Biagi's work on government plans that could make it easier to fire workers.
Mr Berlusconi on Tuesday night expressed anger at the killing, stating that "there is a current danger that must be confronted with all the necessary force".
On hearing news of the murder, Claudio Scajola, the interior minister, cut short a trip to the US and announced he would return home.
Pierferdinando Casini, the speaker of the Italian chamber of deputies, said: "Now is the time for all reasonable people to show that our institutions are solid and that terrorism cannot achieve its objectives."
Many politicians were quick on Tuesday night to draw parallels between the killing of Mr Biagi and the assassination three years ago of a government official, Massimo D'Antona, who advised the centre-left government on similar reform policies. On that occasion, a group calling itself the Red Brigades, a guerrilla movement thought to have been eliminated more than a decade ago, claimed responsibility for the shooting.
Mr Biagi, who was in his 40s, was thought to be one of the principal aides who worked on a joint document on European labour market reform agreed last month by Mr Berlusconi and his UK counterpart, Tony Blair.
His murder comes at a highly delicate moment in Italian industrial relations and is certain to inflame political tensions.
Mr Berlusconi's government last week took a binding decision to press ahead with a package of labour market reforms by the summer. The trade unions have since pledged to hold a general strike and are due to hold a mass demonstration by April. The leader of the most militant of Italy's three unions, Sergio Cofferati, denounced the murder as an "act of barbarity".
Italy has not seen a significant wave of terrorism since the activity of the Red Brigades in the 1970s and 1980s, but the 1999 killing of Mr D'Antona and recent bomb blasts in Rome and other cities have suggested that some far-left political activists are still at work.
Hope you're having fun, HLL.
Bomb blasts are a form of far-left political activism?
What a week in Italy. First Chelsea and her paramour causing havoc in Venice, then this dude gets offed, and then a bus crashes outside of Florence and a bunch of American tourists are killed.
Thank goodness they have fabulous food, it can take your mind off of the troubles.
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