What Gronchi Wants

In late February, the man who is President of Italy until 1962 will call on President Eisenhower. What will he say? Last week, Giovanni Gronchi answered that question in a surprisingly outspoken interview with U.S. Correspondent Edmund Stevens. If State Department officials expect that the invitation to the U.S. will check Signor Gronchi's discomforting leaning to the left in Italian politics, Stevens reported in the Christian Science Monitor, they are in for a "serious shock." Point by point, Gronchi ticked off the advice he intends to give Ike:

RED CHINA. Gronchi will urge the U.S. to drop its opposition to Peking's entry into the U.N., and will let it be known that Italy will soon recognize the Chinese Communists.

GERMAN UNIFICATION. Gronchi thinks the U.S. must produce some "new proposals" for German unification, or Chancellor Konrad Adenauer will progressively lose support, and West Germany will fall for some Soviet proposal.

NATO. Gronchi argues that it was "conceived in the narrow image of the American view, which considers resistance to Communism solely in military terms," and the alliance soon will atrophy unless it concentrates on economic and technical aid.

U.S. FOREIGN POLICY. It is far too rigid and inflexible, and fails to understand "the positive aspects" brought about by the evolution that has followed the revolutions in Soviet Russia and Communist China.

"PROGRESSIVIST GOVERNMENT." Correspondent Stevens cut in: "What about evolution in Italy since you had your republican revolution?" At this point, wrote Stevens, "the President pensively removed the heavy tortoise-shell glasses that usually hide his expression, and smiled a sly Tuscan smile (every Tuscan has some Machiavelli in him and Signor Gronchi rather more than his share). 'I was the first to advocate a so-called opening to the left,' he answered, 'and I'm still in favor of it.' "

Gronchi, a handsome, greying man of 68 who was chosen President last spring, pleasantly explained to Stevens how he would go about arranging the "opening to the left." First he would ditch the Christian Democrats' small but stout allies, the Liberals (the nearest Italian equivalent to a free-enterprise party). They are a good, democratic right-wing group, Gronchi conceded, but there is no place for them in the "progressivist government" he envisages for Italy. Dropping them would leave the Christian Democrats in need of votes to command a majority, and Stevens asked where they would come from.

Not from the Communists, Signor Gronchi replied, for they bow to Moscow's directives. But the Red Socialists of Pietro Nenni are another matter. Though allied with the Communists, Gronchi maintained, they are firm believers in personal freedom and democracy, and differ with the Communists on these points.

"I remarked," said Stevens, "that in that case it was rather strange neither Signor Nenni nor any other spokesman for the Italian Socialist Party had ever spoken in disagreement with their Communist allies on such crucial questions. Signor Gronchi said that Signor Nenni was afraid to express his feelings openly lest it precipitate an open break with the Communists, which might split his own party."

Up from Cornerstones. In Gronchi's nine months in office, Stevens noted as he entered Quirinale Palace between gleaming rows of grenadier guards, Gronchi has brought back much of the pomp and ceremony that went out with King Umberto II in 1946. In that brief time, Giovanni Gronchi has also managed, by double force of his ambition and his personality, to raise the presidency from the cornerstone-laying, banquet-attending job it started out to be. "Not only does he intrude on the [Premier's] powers," Stevens reported, "he also crowds him out of the limelight and steals the show.

"For good or ill, Signor Gronchi's views are sure to exert more and more weight on Italian policy at home and abroad in the next several years. This veteran politician and spokesman for the Christian Democratic left, whom the late Alcide de Gasperi deeply mistrusted, refuses to be a ceremonial figurehead of state. Despite constitutional limitations, he has jockeyed himself into a position where, as President, he can make or break Premiers almost if not quite in the manner of the absolute monarch.

"At the visit's end, I inquired whether Signor Gronchi really intended repeating everything he told me to Mr. Eisenhower. All that and more, he answered, adding 'I believe in frankness.' "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.