ITALY: Duty Fulfilled

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In Rome's Chamber of Deputies last week, Italy's new Premier Amintore Fanfani declared: "The perils of the Middle East have only strengthened the bonds of understanding between Italy and her NATO allies. Our solidarity has been maintained; our duty as allies has been fulfilled." But, added Fanfani, the position in the Middle East requires "more thoughtful attention," and "we must now find a way to assist the peoples concerned to progress."

As Fanfani prepared to leave for Washington to confer this week with President Eisenhower, Fanfani's ambitious friend Enrico Mattei, boss of Italy's state oil monopoly, E.N.I., gave the subject one kind of thoughtful attention. He hopped over to Morocco to sign an agreement giving him exploration and exploitation rights for the oil in an null tract in the Tarfaya province in western Sahara. The split: 75% of the profits for Morocco, 25% for Italy's E.N.I.

Coming atop deals engineered by Mattei in Iran and Egypt that upset the old pattern of fifty-fifty profit splits between private companies that took the risk and the governments that granted concessions, his latest end play won Mattei no gratitude in London or Washington.