Mumbai (AsiaNews) - Once again, diplomacy has triumphed over the power of gestures: This is the reaction of Salman Khurshid, the Indian Foreign Affairs Minister to the return of the Italian Marines to India, expected in New Delhi later today. Yesterday evening, the Italian Government decision to return the two soldiers - charged with the murder of two fishermen from Kerala - was announced, thus complying with the terms of the special permit due to expire today and granted four weeks ago by the Indian government for electoral reasons.
Among the reasons given by Staffan De Mistura, the Italian Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, is the written assurance by India not to apply the death penalty - if convicted - and that the fundamental rights of the two soldiers will be protected.
"I have said many times - said Khurshid - that we should never give up on diplomatic channels." Responding to journalists asking if Sonia Gandhi - President of the Congress - had influenced the decision by Italy, the Minister said: "The diplomacy pursued by this government follows, of course, its own direction, which comes from the first Minister and the President of Congress. " In days gone by Gandhi - an Italian citizen, naturalized Indian after her marriage with Rajiv Gandhi, the prime minister who was assassinated in 1991 - had intervened in the affair of the two Marines, defining the behavior of the Italian government an "unacceptable betrayal of the commitment made to the Supreme Court."
On 11 March, the Italian Government had announced its decision to hold the sailor Maximilian Latorre and Salvatore Girone after expiration of the special permit, invoking the intervention of an international arbitration. The Supreme Court of India responded by issuing a restraining order against Daniele Mancini, Italian Ambassador in New Delhi and signatory of the affidavit in which Italy had agreed to return the Marines to India at the end of the license.
