AP News, September 26th, 2007
Italy's premier Tuesday called for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty with a view to its complete abolition, a move he said would guarantee better justice around the globe and an end to cultures of vengeance.
"If genuine politics means showing foresight, we shall perform a great political act through the adoption of this resolution," Premier Romano Prodi said in his address to world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly. "It will demonstrate that humankind isn't capable of making progress only in science but also in the field of ethics."
A moratorium was expected to face opposition from the U.S. and other countries that allow capital punishment, including Iran and China.
Italy began a diplomatic push against capital punishment in the wake of the Dec. 30 execution in Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Past lobbying by Italy for U.N. action to strike down the death penalty has been unsuccessful.
Prodi told the General Assembly a "growing trend" worldwide against capital punishment boded well for his efforts, and support for the moratorium was growing "day by day" in Europe and in every region of the world.
Success, Prodi said, would produce a just future "and a society that has at last freed itself from the spiral of revenge."
Still, the premier warned of an uphill battle in an open letter published in several European newspapers earlier in the day.
"We know that we cannot harbor illusions. The battle against capital punishment is a difficult one, because many countries still practice it," Prodi wrote in the letter.
Italian Foreign Ministry spokesman Pasquale Ferrara said that 95 countries had expressed support for Italy's push for a moratorium.
The resolution would need two-thirds of the votes in the 192-member U.N. General Assembly to pass.
Prodi met Monday with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and discussed the moratorium, among other topics. A diplomatic official who is traveling with Prodi said Ban supports the initiative.
A U.N. spokesman, Brenden Varma, said Ban's views on the death penalty have not changed since January, when he stated his belief that life was precious and must be protected.
Italy is a firm opponent of capital punishment. Rome's Colosseum, once the arena for deadly gladiator combat and executions, has become a symbol of the country's stance. Since 1999, it is lit up every time a death sentence is commuted somewhere in the world or a country abolishes capital punishment.
The European Union is likely to back Italy's call, but countries that have the death penalty, including the U.S., Iran, Saudi Arabia and China, are expected to oppose it.
The United States has executed at least 40 people this year and 1,098 people since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington organization that looks at problems with the capital punishment system.
Richard A. Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, declined to speculate how the U.S. would vote.
However, he noted that "we strongly feel that the use of the death penalty in the United States is a decision best left to democratically elected governments at the federal and state levels."
Many American states have been examining their use of lethal injection. And hours before Prodi was scheduled to deliver his speech to the General Assembly, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge from two Kentucky death row inmates who claim lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
