A Further Plea

"I feel somewhat abandoned "

Premier Giulio Andreotti had just concluded his first complete report on the kidnaping of Christian Democratic Leader Aldo Moro to a tense and packed Chamber of Deputies. Despite Moro's letter of the week before, suggesting authorities bargain with the terrorists of the Red Brigades for his release, the government would reject any attempt at extortion by the kidnapers, said Andreotti, and stood firmly against negotiations. Suddenly Benigno Zaccagnini, secretary of the ruling Christian Democrats, was handed a sealed message. Zaccagnini hurried out of the chamber. A few moments later Ugo La Malfa, leader of the centrist Republicans, told the astonished deputies that the message was a new letter from Moro.

The timing of the missive, obviously designed to upstage the parliamentary debate, once again demonstrated the terrorists' skill at holding the country hostage to their game of psychological suspense. Said one police official grudgingly: "The Red Brigades' sense of stage direction is perfect." But if the underlying goal of Moro's ultra-leftist kidnapers was to sabotage Italy's democratic process and its tenuous political balance, they had failed, at least so far. The effect of the new challenge was a closing of ranks behind the government's position.

The letter to Zaccagnini, like the one sent the week before to Interior Minister Francesco Cossiga, was handwritten. In his earlier message Moro wrote that he feared he would be forced to disclose official secrets harmful to the government. This time he plaintively accused his colleagues of forsaking him. Pleading for "realism," he argued that "the only possible positive solution" was "the liberation of prisoners on both sides. Time is running out fast." He concluded: "In truth, I feel somewhat abandoned by all of you."

As before, the letter failed to make any specific demands on behalf of Moro's kidnapers. But there was some hope that a ransom deal that did not involve the Christian Democratic Party or the government might be worked out privately. Such a move would have a precedent. When the son of former Socialist Party Leader Francesco de Martino was kidnaped in Naples last year, his release was secured with a reported ransom of $880,000, raised by wealthy party backers and a subscription among the membership. The main difference is that the De Martino kidnaping turned out to be the work of common criminals, while the Red Brigades have shown less interest in ransom money than in fomenting terror and mocking police efforts to capture them. At week's end, even as the trial of 15 Red Brigades defendants continued in Turin, a leading industrialist in Genoa was wounded by two gunmen on his way to work. A man saying he was from the Red Brigades claimed responsibility for the ambush in a phone call to a newspaper.

Meanwhile Pope Paul VI, a longtime friend of Moro's, made a direct personal appeal for his release. But in his usual Sunday-noon blessing to the crowd in St. Peter's Square, the Pope denied that he had "any particular indications" about what he called this "painful affair," thereby refuting rumors that Vatican officials had been in secret contact with the kidnapers. Pleaded His Holiness: "To the unknown authors of the terrifying plot, we address a pressing appeal to implore them to give the prisoner his liberty."

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