Premier Romano Prodi said on Tuesday that the death of an Italian soldier in a terrorist attack in southern Iraq would not induce the government to speed up its troop withdrawal.
Addressing the House on the Monday evening attack which left one Italian soldier dead and four others injured, the centre-left premier said that "this will have no repercussions on the timetable for withdrawal". Prodi, who won the April general election, has said he will withdraw the 2,600 Italian troops serving in Iraq by the end of the year, in line with a deadline set by the previous government.
However, some allies in his nine-party coalition are pushing for a swifter pullout, a demand which was renewed in the wake of the Monday attack. The Italian Communists' Party said: "What are we waiting for? We expect the next cabinet meeting to give the green light to an immediate pullout which is what we promised our voters".
Two other allies, the Green party and the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), also called for an immediate withdrawal.
But Prodi indicated he would resist their pressure, telling the House that "nothing has changed... all talk of a political plan aimed at conditioning the timetable is groundless". He expressed his condolences for the attack, saying Italy was united in its mourning.
"The whole of Italy wishes to pay homage to those who have fallen in service and in the defence of peace and international stability, against a fanatical terrorism which spares no-one," he said. Prodi also stressed that the bombing appeared
"indiscriminate" and had not deliberately targeted the Italian contingent.
The attack happened at about 9.35 pm local time on Monday, as five soldiers of the Sassari infantry regiment were aboard one of several Italian vehicles escorting a British convoy on the road to Tallil near Nassiriya, the southern Iraqi town where the Italian contingent is based.
According to an initial reconstruction, the bomb was a rudimentary explosive device activated from a distance as the
convoy passed. Corporal Alessandro Pibiri, 25, died of his injuries soon after the blast. Corporal Luca Daga, 28, is said to be in a critical condition, while three others - Fulvio Concas, Manuele Pilia and Yari Contu - sustained lesser injuries.
Corporal Pibiri's death took the number of Italians killed in Iraq since 2003 to 38. The most recent attack was on April 27, when four soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing similar to Monday's. Soon after news of the latest attack broke late on
Monday, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and Prodi expressed their grief and solidarity with the troops in Iraq.
Italy did not take part in the 2003 US-led war in Iraq but later sent troops for peacekeeping and reconstruction. Some 2,600 Italian troops are currently serving there as part of a British-led multinational stabilisation force in the southern part of the country. The withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq topped the agenda of a meeting in Rome last Friday between Prodi and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Prodi said after the talks that Italian and British defence ministers would soon meet to arrange details of the pullout. Italian troops in Iraq are under British command and so the withdrawal has to be closely coordinated with London. Last month, Prodi condemned the Iraq war as a "grave error" which had created "new pretexts for terrorist actions".
While affirming his commitment to close ties with Washington, the former European Commission chief indicated that Italy's priorities were now with Europe. His position contrasted with that of previous premier Silvio Berlusconi, who was a staunch ally of US President George W. Bush - as well as Blair - and made Italo-American relations a priority.
While Berlusconi supported Bush's decision to invade Iraq three years ago and afterwards sent troops, Prodi and the centre left opposed Italian involvement from the start. In the run-up to the general election, Prodi also stressed he was keen to overcome divisions which Berlusconi's pro-American line had created between Italy on the one side and France and Germany on the other.
