Arabs Slap La Stamper

Libya's ascetic ruler, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, is not known as a connoisseur of humor, especially when it is at his own expense. So a satirical article about him in Turin's La Stampa last month enraged him. "It seems," ran the mock-fan-magazine prose, "that he has an ulcer, it seems that he is a homosexual, that he sleeps on a mattress of tobacco leaves, that he has a harem of 48 wives in Switzerland." Libya immediately demanded that the article's coauthors be dismissed from La Stampa, one of Italy's most respected dailies.

Ordinarily, Libya would have little leverage in such a showdown. But La Stampa happens to be owned by Fiat, a giant industrial conglomerate that is not in the business of offending influential heads of state. Though he balked at firing the reporters, Fiat Chairman Giovanni Agnelli paid a visit to Libya's embassy in Rome, hoping to mollify Gaddafi. Agnelli failed dramatically. Last week the Arab League Boycott Committee in Beirut threatened a ban on all Fiat products in Arab nations unless Agnelli sacks La Stampa Editor Arrigo Levi, a Jew who once fought in the Israeli army. Agnelli is sticking with his editor. If carried out, the threat could be a serious blow to Fiat, which last year did an estimated $50 million worth of business in Arab countries. The Arab move would also set a frightening precedent in international censorship. At week's end the Italian government, which relies heavily on Libyan oil, sternly rejected Arab demands that it intervene.

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