ITALY: The Moro Tragedy Goes On

From the kidnapers, an impossible demand, then silence

Dear Papa,

We feel the need after so many days to convey to you with these few lines a sign of our affection. The thoughts of every moment are dedicated to you with renewed love, which from day to day grows with the knowledge of what you are and have been for us ... In this tragedy we have discovered, each one in his way, that you have given us unsuspected resources of moral strength and love. We cultivate, with prayer and deeds, the hope of seeing you again amongst us, and embracing you ... We love you profoundly.

Your Family

So read the moving letter to Aldo Moro, published in Milan's daily Il Giorno. It capped a series of urgent appeals last week from U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and other prominent figures to Moro's Red Brigades kidnapers to release unharmed the missing Christian Democratic leader and former Italian Premier. But as the agonizing human tragedy entered its seventh week, only Moro's captors knew for sure whether he was alive or dead, and they gave no hints as to what they might do next.

The week began with yet another of the terrorists' communiqués, this one demanding the release of 13 leftist prisoners in exchange for Moro. Among those on the list: Red Brigades Chieftain Renato Curcio, 37, now on trial in Turin for armed insurrection, and Mario Rossi and Augusto Viel, two members of a former gang called October XXII who gained notoriety for the killing of a bank guard during a Genoa holdup in 1971. Along with the communiqué came another plaintive, handwritten letter from Moro addressed to Christian Democratic Secretary-General Benigno Zaccagnini. It called the party's rejection of negotiations "wicked and ungrateful." The letter went on: "It is a matter of seconds rather than minutes. We are at massacre time."

The new communiqué, which was discovered only two days after an earlier deadline for Moro's life had passed, once again threatened his execution. Yet even Socialists and some Christian Democrats who had favored negotiating with the terrorists agreed that the proposed prisoner exchange was an impossible demand. After another huddle with party leaders, Premier Giulio Andreotti confirmed that the government's tough stand was "a political and moral duty" that was "definitive." Yet another letter from the tragic victim was received at week's end. In it, Moro, quite possibly under duress, begs his Christian Democratic colleagues to convene a special party conference to discuss the issue of his release.

The most vehement opponents of any bargain with the kidnapers were still the Communists. Stung by the Brigatisti's repeated claims to be fighting for "Communism," the party was determined to put as much distance as possible between itself and the ultra-leftist "criminals." Arguing that a surrender to the terrorists would lead to more violence and civil war, Party Chief Enrico Berlinguer told a party youth congress in Florence: "We must be inflexible not because of a cold and abstract 'reason of state,' but because, if we yield, the democratic institutions would enter into a suicidal logic."