Master of Persuasiva

Andreotti faces trying times--as usual

> The Premier is seated at a table in Rome's Palazzo Chigi. Opposite him are three grim labor leaders. They want an immediate $34 monthly pay increase for hospital workers; failing that, 2.5 million public employees will stage a sympathy strike, followed by a crippling one-day general walkout. After six hours of fruitless talks, the Premier has had enough. "No!" he declares angrily. The nation's inflation rate is at 12%. To breach wage guidelines with yet another raise for a major union would destroy the government's efforts to stabilize the economy. Startled by the Premier's vehemence, the union leaders accept his face-saving compromise for a raise that falls below government limits.

> Confronted with an urgent need for imported petroleum, the Premier flies off to the Middle East to cement Italy's relations with the oil-producing states. After a four-country tour, he succeeds in fostering several economic deals with Libya and Iraq.

> France and West Germany want a European Monetary System to control fluctuations of the Continent's currencies. Italy leans toward joining the EMS, while Britain still ponders the matter. The Premier flies to London for talks with Prime Minister James Callaghan. He persuasively argues that without Britain, the EMS would be incomplete.

No leader in recent Italian history has been able to demonstrate the mastery of persuasiva that Premier Giulio Andreotti routinely employs. Having in a few weeks time derailed a crippling strike, guarded his nation's access to continued oil shipments and committed his monetary policy to the new European plan. Andreotti is being sternly tested once again. Already under attack from within his parliamentary coalition and even from fellow Christian Democrats, he will soon face a crucial vote on his new economic program. If he loses, Italy's fragile coalition government, which relies on the Communists for support, could fall.

Many observers judge that if Andreotti cannot put the economic plan across, then no Italian politician can. Though he is one of the West's lesser known political leaders, he is one of its most effective. Now 59, he entered politics in 1944 as a political apprentice to the late Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi, the most respected of Italian leaders. Observes an admirer: "He was De Gasperi's tape recorder. He remembered everything and erased nothing." Andreotti has vast experience in government; he has held virtually every portfolio, including three previous turns as Prime Minister.

Unlike most Italian politicians. Andreotti is not a flamboyant orator. He speaks like a man reciting the Rome telephone directory. He is a tactician, not a grand strategist in the mold of his longtime colleague Aldo Moro, who was kidnaped on the day Andreotti's Cabinet was sworn in. "I'm not too keen on ideological discussion," Andreotti once conceded. "I couldn't tell you if Marx is better than Proudhon and if Lenin is a good or evil genius in history." Fabrizio Cicchitto, a Socialist Deputy, claims Andreotti displays "a willful absence of long-range vision.

He concerns himself with the problem of administration. As for what will happen in the future, that is unpredictable and he will adapt himself."

A lawyer and a devout Roman Catholic like his wife Livia. Andreotti manages 15-hour workdays on only four hours of sleep. He is at his desk at home before seven each morning, making entries in his diary in a secret code that he devised. He has written several books, including a biography of De Gasperi and historical novels. He is also an inveterate collector, squirreling away such diverse items as bars of soap, Greek artifacts and letters from other statesmen. Because of persistent terrorist threats, he has had to forgo trips to race tracks and soccer games.

Today Andreotti confines his gambling to the political sphere, but he is finding plenty of action. Eight months ago, Enrico Berlinguer's Communist Party entered into a working agreement with Andreotti's Christian Democrats, the Socialists and two smaller political groups. His government's majority in Parliament has 576 votes (out of a total of 630), but it is now under severe stress. Berlinguer pledged to help restrain the wage demands of Italy's labor unions in exchange for Communist participation in the parliamentary majority. But more than 20,000 card-carrying members have dropped out of the party, protesting Berlinguer's support of the Christian Democrats' economic recovery plan. If the unions keep up the pressure, Berlinguer could be forced to oppose part of Andreotti's program (known as the "Pandolfi plan," after Treasury Minister Filippo Pandolfi) when it comes to a vote. A Communist withdrawal would pave the way for the collapse of Andreotti's coalition, another election and, perhaps, the entry of Communists into the cabinet.

Andreotti's government is challenged at the same time that the Christian Democrats are entering a new and uncertain stage in their relationship with the Vatican following the election of the first non-Italian Pontiff in 456 years. Many politicians expect an accelerating detachment between the church and the party.

Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's semiofficial daily, Auxiliary Bishop Clemente Riva of Rome argued that "a gradual disengagement" had begun before the accession of John Paul II. But Riva also noted that the church in the past had intervened when a "particular situation" arose. Many political observers believe that John Paul, whose native Poland has lived for 30 years under Communism, would openly oppose , any further advances into the government by the Communists.

The Premier is aware of the risks he must run to maintain his uncomfortable association with the Communists. In the past, he has adroitly avoided head-on collisions between the Vatican and the Communists. When a bill permitting abortions on demand came up in Parliament this spring, for example, the Christian Democrats made only token efforts to defeat it. The law was enacted by the votes of other parties, including the Communists.

As the vote on the Pandolfi plan draws near. Andreotti has used uncharacteristic rhetoric to spell out the consequences of defeat. Because the government includes "nearly all political persuasions," he says, "if we err, the democratic system itself will be in jeopardy. There will be no democratic opposition for the discontented to turn to." In the end, Andreotti's well-known stubbornness could be the surest safeguard of his power: during his second time as Premier, he suffered 13 consecutive parliamentary defeats before finally agreeing to step down.

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