HOC's General-Secretary Sergio D'Elia slammed the reply...

HOC's General-Secretary Sergio D'Elia slammed the reply given by state Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Margherita Boniver in reply to the parliamentary questions tabled in the Italian Senate by Ottaviano Del Turco and in the Chamber by Enrico Buemi with regard to the state of the art of the Italian EU presidency's initiative for the presentation of a pro-moratorium resolution at the UN General Assembly.
"We judge the government's way of setting about this initiative to be absolutely negative and defeatist. The government is showing a loser's attitude in its delaying tactics with regard to the presentation of a pro-moratorium resolution to the UN.
"Instead of feeling strengthened by the favourable stand taken by the principal European institutions - Parliament and Commission - over and above stands taken in Italy by both parliament and public opinion, the Italian Presidency of the European Union continues to repeat the 'doubts' expressed at an EU level without explaining what these doubts are or countering them badly.
"Instead of presenting with determination the results of a survey on the positions individual states will take at the General Assembly - that confirms HOC's affirmation that a pro-moratorium resolution would be approved, and if anything prove HOC's voting forecast to be pessimistic - the Italian government continues to repeat manifestly unfounded and pessimistic fears and estimates.
"Rather than proposing immediately to the European partners and the rest of the world a text for a resolution and ask for their co-sponsorship on it, the government has tied itself to the prerequisite - a politically weak and institutionally unfounded one - of a 'unanimous and necessarily unanimous European consensus' as Ms Boniver declared in the Senate.
"It is unimaginable that not only the entire Italian diplomatic service, our representatives at the UN or even the European partners met over a number of occasions in recent months were not even given a draft resolution. In 1994, when the Italian government proposed the resolution to the General Assembly, such a draft had been circulated already by July.
"All of this has led to an unnecessary waste of time that has now almost definitely jeopardised a winning cause and an achievable political goal, and probably even the technical possibility of presenting the resolution to the GA. At the best - or rather, worst - hypothesis, this delay is attributable to incapability.
We await events in the coming days to understand whether this attitude by the Italian government was an attempt to mask its lack of interest or worse still an abandonment of a campaign whose objectives are clear-cut and humanely relevant."