Italians march against U.S. military base expansion - International Injustice/Law

Italians march against U.S. military base expansion
by CNN via rialator - CNN -- Associated Press Saturday, Feb 17 2007, 6:07pm
international / injustice/law / other press

Posted February 17, 2007

Despite fears that violent demonstrators would be drawn to Saturday's protest, the march took place without incident, finishing outside the main train station where it started as hundred of police officers stood guard and helicopters hovered overhead. The route did not pass the airfield where the expanded base is to be built, where critics keep a permanent picket.

"The government majority -- whether they agree with the protest or, like me, do not -- welcomes that the demonstration in Vicenza finished in an orderly fashion," said Premier Romano Prodi, who had urged protesters to be peaceful. "This must be stressed."

Police estimated the crowd at 50,000 to 80,000, while organizers put the numbers at 120,000.

"To build a military base is not the gesture of a peaceful government," said 24-year-old city resident Simone Pasin, draped in a rainbow peace flag. "I think it's time to dismantle military bases and put up structures of peace."

Trains and buses brought in leftist activists and anti-globalization protesters from across Italy to support residents concerned that the expansion would increase traffic and noise and air pollution, deplete local resources including water and gas, and raise the risk of terrorist attacks.

Prodi's government has approved the project, angering his far-left allies. Communist and Greens parties, members of the governing coalition, have backed the protest, though no one from the government showed up after Prodi banned ministers from attending.
'Done deal'

Prodi has said his government had no reason to halt the expansion, which also has been approved by local authorities.

The Ederle base has about 2,900 active duty military personnel. The expansion at the Dal Molin airport, on the other side of town, would allow the U.S. military to move four battalions now based in Germany, raising the number to 5,000.

The move is part of the U.S. Army's overall transformation into a lighter, more mobile force -- reducing its numbers in Europe from a Cold War high of 480,000 to 88,000 by 2012. Under the plans, elements of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade, a rapid reaction unit now spread between Italy and Germany, would be united.

"I think it is a done deal. I don't think there is any turning back. This is what Prodi has said and what the local authorities have said," said David Bustamente, a spokesman at the U.S. Consulate in Milan. "This demonstration is about process."

Construction is scheduled to begin later this year and to be completed by 2011 at a total cost of $576 million. Before construction begins, a task force run by Italians has been set up to hear community concerns and make adjustments to the plans where possible.

"We're trying to show sensitivity, because we know people are concerned," Bustamente said.

The 173d Airborne Brigade is Europe's quick response force, and is scheduled to redeploy soon for Afghanistan. In 2003, the unit made the biggest airdrop since World War II when its soldiers landed in northern Iraq.

Some in Italy's ruling coalition feared the demonstration might suggest anti-U.S. sentiment in the country, but despite the presence of some "Yankees Out!" T-shirts, the mood was more anti-military than anti-American.

"The problems is not that Americans are in Vicenza," said Pasin. "The problem is that there is a military base."

A group of Americans ignored a warning by the U.S. Embassy to avoid Vicenza and joined the protest behind a banner "Not in our name," receiving cheers by passing Italians who shook their hands and snapped their photos.

"The U.S. should not build military bases, the U.S. should think of its domestic problems," said John Gilbert, an American living in Italy for the past 25 years who was in a group of about 20 Americans who had traveled from Rome and Florence.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

VICENZA, Italy (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Italians under heavy police guard marched through the city of Vicenza on Saturday to protest at the expansion of a U.S. military base that has divided the center-left government.

Leftists who last year voted for Prime Minister Romano Prodi, an Iraq war opponent, turned out in droves to decry his approval for U.S. plans to expand the base in Vicenza, home of the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

Pacifists waved rainbow-striped peace banners while some protesters carried anti-American slogans like "Yankees go Home" as they marched through the city and gathered in a main square.

"There is no reason to have this base here," said Antonio Faitta, a 25-year-old gardener who traveled from Genoa.

The Pentagon wants a larger base so that it can house the entire brigade instead of dividing it between Italy and Germany.

Prodi appealed to demonstrators to refrain from violence, following warnings from the interior minister that the protest could draw people "hostile to the forces of law and order".

The U.S. embassy had warned Americans to steer clear of the small northern Italian city of 115,000, where officials also shut schools normally open on Saturday as a precaution.

But the protests were peaceful. Police estimates pegged the crowd at more than 70,000 people, a turnout that Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, of the Greens Party, said was a resounding "referendum against doubling the U.S. base".

Prodi stood firm, saying the government's program would not "change direction under the pressure of a protest".

The base expansion is the latest headache for the 67-year-old prime minister, who has faced revolts by his broad leftist coalition partners on everything from gay rights to the budget and the presence of Italian peacekeepers in Afghanistan.

"Today, Prodi has been given a vote of no confidence by his own majority. He should step down," said Isabella Bertolini of the center-right opposition Forza Italia party.

LIGHTNING ROD

The demonstration had served as a lightning rod for anti-U.S. sentiment in a country where judges have ordered CIA agents and a U.S. soldier to stand trial for kidnapping and murder.

A Milan judge charged the CIA agents on Friday with abducting a Muslim cleric in Milan in a covert operation and flying him to Egypt. The U.S. soldier was charged on February 7 with murdering an Italian secret agent in Iraq, although both governments have described the 2005 shooting as an accident.

All will almost certainly be tried in absentia.

"I don't want any more Americans here and I don't want a new base. They should just leave us alone," said Pucci Mori, a resident of Vicenza, who lives near the proposed base expansion.

"Wherever they go in the world, Americans cause trouble."

The new barracks would be on the other side of the city from the existing one. That has raised worries about new roads to handle military traffic linking the two parts, loss of green space and strains on public services.

Residents fear it could even put Vicenza in danger.

"The people of Vicenza are concerned. The base would be in the heart of the city and in the case of a military conflict it could become a target," said Nobel literature laureate Dario Fo.

© Reuters 2007

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