Mussolini's heir on Israel trip as Italian party alters image [View All]

[Aidoneus]

Mussolini's heir on Israel trip as Italian party alters image

Sophie Arie in Rome
Monday November 24, 2003
The Guardian

Gianfranco Fini, leader of the Alleanza Nazionale and Italy's deputy prime minister, began an official visit to Israel yesterday in an attempt to remake his party's neo-fascist image and fashion himself as a respectable conservative leader.

Mr Fini, who founded the AN out of the ashes of Benito Mussolini's Movimento Socialista Italiana (MSI) in 1994, has turned the party line around in the past 10 years.

In 1994 he called Mussolini the greatest politician of the 20th century. Eight years later he retracted the comment, condemning him for racial laws that led to the deportation of 6,000 Italian Jews to Nazi death camps.

He has now become one of Europe's most vociferous supporters of Israel. Despite EU concern at Israel's "security fence" in the West Bank, and the Pope's comment that "the Holy Land doesn't need walls, but bridges", Mr Fini has supported the barrier as a necessary means of self-defence.

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Mr Sharon described Italy as "the closest friend we have in Europe". "Fini is a good and friendly leader," he told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. "I know of the criticism aimed at him, but I think it's a good thing he's coming to Israel ... It is time to look to the future, not to the past."

--snip--

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1091705,00.html