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UNITED NATIONS -- The Italian government recognized the world's most fossilized communist regime, with Rome's center-left coalition offering diplomatic ties to Kim Jong-il, the latter day Caesar of North Korea. At first glance the rapprochement looks harmless enough. Relations between Rome and Pyongyang are hardly going to tilt East Asia's balance of power but do bring a new degree of legitimacy to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, something it hardly deserves.
This is all part of what is called the "Dini Doctrine" named after Rome's affable if freewheeling Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini who has opened diplomatic doors in places others fear to tread--Teheran and Tripoli among them.
Being in Rome in 1996 when Italy elected the Olive Tree Coalition of leftists and former communists--I recall labeling the Olive Tree government as genuinely green on the outside with a red pimento inside. In the beginning Romano Prodi became Prime Minister, the Professor being a decent and distinguished fellow who has now become President of the European Union's non-elected "eurocracy."
But Massimo D'Alema, a former Marxist who has since become Prime Minister has been distinctly anti-American (always a cheap card to play) and quick to curry favor among rogues. A year ago Senor Prime Minster offered political sanctuary in Rome to the top Kurdish Marxist terrorist Abdullah Oclan before pressure from the Turks forced him to send the scoundrel packing--in this case on an odyssey which ended in Kenya and into the hands of Turkish commandos.
D'Alema has also tried to serve as the bridge between the European Union and Islamic Iran having hosted an Ayatollah in the Eternal City. Last year, during a kissy- kissy summit with China's communist supremo Jiang Zemin, D'Alema opined that Beijing and the Vatican should open formal diplomatic ties. As always, D'Alema is the genial go between Europe and politically challenged regimes.
That Italy has courted Colonel Gadaffy's Libya should come as no surprise. At least in Libya's case, there's a historical tie between Bella Italia and Libya, which one shall recall, was once part of Il Duce's realm on the southern tier of Mare Nostrum. Beyond the tenuous thread of historical continuity, there are some very lucrative petroleum concessions for Italian firms. Enough said.
As a member of NATO and the G-7 "club of industrial countries" Italy plays a key economic role in the European Union, as it should . What is more distressing though, is that her current government looks to serve as the political halfway house between some genuinely dangerous regimes and the legitimacy of Italian and wider European Union recognition.
Though North Korea is recognized by a number of West European neutrals such as Austria and Sweden, diplomatic ties with a key NATO member is quite another league. Foreign Minister Dini apparently briefed U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright of the impending move during the "Third Way" socialist summit in Florence a few months ago.
The diplomatic deal with the DPRK was consummated in Rome at the North Korean legation to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which has enough to do sending food to starving North Korea. Contacts were also made in New York between Italian and North Korean diplomats; Pyongyang has been a member of the UN since 1991.
South Korea's President Kim Dae-Jung as part of his own government's "Sunshine Policy" towards the North, welcomes Italy's moves as opening the DPRK "hermit regime" to the outside world. Such sets the stage for a far more interesting diplomatic rapprochement in the works between Pyongyang and Tokyo and possibly Washington.
Superficially, the recognition is just that. Yet, offering the DPRK unearned legitimacy in the midst of Pyongyang's aggressive missile proliferation to Middle Eastern rogue states, a still murky nuclear program, an abysmal human rights record among its own populace, and above all a continuing military threat to American and South Korean troops defending the DMZ dividing the Korean peninsula, puts the relations with Rome in another light. May we ask, "Where's the quid pro quo?"
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues who writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
