ITALY: MUSLIMS TOLD TO VOTE COMMUNIST

Rome, 5 April (AKI) - The secretary general of Italy's largest Muslim organisation, the Union of Islamic communities in Italy (UCOII), has called on Italian Muslims to vote for the Party of Italian Communists at the general election. Hamza Piccardo sent an email late Tuesday to Muslim centres saying that the party's leader Oliviero Diliberto had been sensitive to the needs of Muslim inmates when he was justice minister in the late 1990s and this constituted a sound reason to vote for him on 9-10 April. This was the first time that a leading member of Italy's Muslim community publicly supported a party on the eve of an election.

In the email, Piccardo also said that, "another five years with a cabinet of [prime minister Silvio] Berlusconi and the Northern League Party is for Muslims and for foreigners in Italy a sad perspective of misunderstanding and segregation." The Northern League is an anti-immigration party in the government coalition.

The UCOII leader explained that he met Diliberto along with the president of UCOII Mohamed Nour Dachan when he was justice minister - from October 1998 until December 1999 in the progressive government of Massimo D'Alema.

"We spoke at length about the community's problems and needs, agreeing that the government needed to take more action on its behalf. Diliberto was extremely interested and helpful. In particular, we spoke to him about the problem of celebrating Ramadan in prisons, asking the ministry to make sure that dinner was served when [Muslim inmates] could interrupt their fast."

The leader of UCOII said that Diliberto's willingness to accommodate the needs of the Muslim community was a good reason to vote for his party - even placing at the end of his email the logos of the Party of Italian Communists and its allies at the Senate, the Greens, both members of the center-left coalition.

Piccardo concluded that in December 1999 the minister sent him a letter explaining that, as agreed in their previous conversation, he had "given instructions so that Muslims in Italian prisons could conveniently abide by their Ramadan obligations. Ever since, that practice has been implemented in Italian prisons."