ITALY: Master of Persuasiva

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Andreotti faces trying times—as usual

> The Premier is seated at a table in Rome's Palazzo Chigi. Opposite him are three grim labor leaders. They want an immediate $34 monthly pay increase for hospital workers; failing that, 2.5 million public employees will stage a sympathy strike, followed by a crippling one-day general walkout. After six hours of fruitless talks, the Premier has had enough. "No!" he declares angrily. The nation's inflation rate is at 12%. To breach wage guidelines with yet another raise for a major union would destroy the government's efforts to stabilize the economy. Startled by the Premier's vehemence, the union leaders accept his face-saving compromise for a raise that falls below government limits.

> Confronted with an urgent need for imported petroleum, the Premier flies off to the Middle East to cement Italy's relations with the oil-producing states. After a four-country tour, he succeeds in fostering several economic deals with Libya and Iraq.

> France and West Germany want a European Monetary System to control fluctuations of the Continent's currencies. Italy leans toward joining the EMS, while Britain still ponders the matter. The Premier flies to London for talks with Prime Minister James Callaghan. He persuasively argues that without Britain, the EMS would be incomplete.

No leader in recent Italian history has been able to demonstrate the mastery of persuasiva that Premier Giulio Andreotti routinely employs. Having in a few weeks time derailed a crippling strike, guarded his nation's access to continued oil shipments and committed his monetary policy to the new European plan. Andreotti is being sternly tested once again. Already under attack from within his parliamentary coalition and even from fellow Christian Democrats, he will soon face a crucial vote on his new economic program. If he loses, Italy's fragile coalition government, which relies on the Communists for support, could fall.

Many observers judge that if Andreotti cannot put the economic plan across, then no Italian politician can. Though he is one of the West's lesser known political leaders, he is one of its most effective. Now 59, he entered politics in 1944 as a political apprentice to the late Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi, the most respected of Italian leaders. Observes an admirer: "He was De Gasperi's tape recorder. He remembered everything and erased nothing." Andreotti has vast experience in government; he has held virtually every portfolio, including three previous turns as Prime Minister.

Unlike most Italian politicians. Andreotti is not a flamboyant orator. He speaks like a man reciting the Rome telephone directory. He is a tactician, not a grand strategist in the mold of his longtime colleague Aldo Moro, who was kidnaped on the day Andreotti's Cabinet was sworn in. "I'm not too keen on ideological discussion," Andreotti once conceded. "I couldn't tell you if Marx is better than Proudhon and if Lenin is a good or evil genius in history." Fabrizio Cicchitto, a Socialist Deputy, claims Andreotti displays "a willful absence of long-range vision.