The Daily Telegraph - 29.08.2019

Salvini sidelined by Italy’s unlikely coalition

By Nick Squires in Rome

ITALY was on the verge of having a

new government last night after the

centre-Left Democratic Party and the

anti-establishment Five Star Move-

ment said they were prepared to form a

coalition.

The deal will avert a general election

which would likely have resulted in

Matteo Salvini becoming prime minis-

ter at the head of a hard-Right alliance.

Giuseppe Conte, who resigned as

prime minister last week, is poised to

be reinstated. He will meet Sergio Mat-

tarella, the president, this morning and

is likely to be given a mandate to try to

form a new government.

The breakthrough in the tortuous

political crisis came after Mr Mattarella

held talks with all the major parties.

After days of disagreement, the

Democratic Party (PD) agreed to Five

Star’s demand that Mr Conte be rein-

stated. The softly spoken former law-

yer will now have to hammer out a

common agenda and a list of ministers

between the putative partners, who

were previously sworn enemies.

The crisis was precipitated earlier

this month when Mr Salvini, the dep-

uty prime minister and head of the far-

Right League, withdrew his support

from the previous coalition with Five

Star, declaring it dead.

He demanded that the country head

to elections, but his gamble backfired.

Last night, Mr Salvini said he was

“incredulous” that the Democrats, who

performed dismally in European elec-

tions in May, were now poised to enter

government “through the back door”.

He blamed “palace games” for creat-

ing the nascent coalition, which he said

defied the will of millions of voters. The

anti-establishment Five Star Move-

ment had jumped into bed with the

old-style establishment in a coalition

that would be “remote-controlled by

Merkel and Macron”, he added.

The League is by far the most popu-

lar party, although its support has

dropped a few points in recent days

from a high of 39 per cent.

Nicola Zingaretti, the head of the PD,

said the new government offered a

fresh start and “discontinuity” with the

populist coalition.

The deal could still falter – the par-

ties have to agree a ministerial line-up

and Five Star, a champion of direct de-

mocracy, will allow its grass-roots sup-

porters to vote on the accord in an

online poll. “Only if the vote is positive

will Five Star support [it],” said Luigi Di

Maio, the party’s leader.

Mr Salvini is trenchantly opposed to

the new coalition, which could lock

him out of power for the rest of the leg-

islature, due to last until 2023. Silvio

Berlusconi, the former prime minister,

also condemned the deal.

The two new allies have been highly

critical of each other for years and disa-

gree on key issues, from the economy

to big infrastructure projects and atti-

tudes towards Brussels, with the PD

much more pro-EU than Five Star.

“The new coalition is unlikely to

prove stable in the long run,” said Fed-

erico Santi of Eurasia Group, a political

risk consultancy.

Should the new government fail, Mr

Salvini will be poised to bounce back.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Page 30

French police cry ‘savagery’

as attacks on officers rise

By David Chazan in Paris

ASSAULTS on French police officers,
firefighters and ambulance crews have
hit record levels, averaging 110 a day
amid unprecedented public hostility.
More than 23,000 assaults against
security forces, firefighters and ambu-
lance crews have been recorded this
year, a 15 per cent rise on the same pe-
riod in 2018. Violence against police of-
ficers has increased by more than 60
per cent in less than 20 years,
Assailants pretending to be accident
victims have often ambushed police of-
ficers and firefighters.
On Saturday, about 30 attackers
hurled stones at firefighters as they
tackled a burning vehicle in the Paris
suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie. Forced to re-
treat, the firefighters abandoned equip-

ment and could not put out the blaze

until police arrived 45 minutes later.

The “yellow vest” protests have

raised tensions and fuelled animosity

towards the police. Senior officers also

blame Islamist radicalisation and the

perception in many deprived areas that

police officers are the enemy.

Patrice Ribeiro, the secretary-gen-

eral of the Synergie-Officiers police un-

ion, said: “There is no longer any

respect for authority and the sense of

impunity has increased.

“The radicalisation of behaviour has

today reduced part of the population to

savagery,” Mr Ribeiro added.

Another police union official said:

“Gangs are now assaulting firefighters

and ambulance crews, who are hardly

likely to use force, just as often as they

attack the police.”

Taliban says peace deal with

US to end Afghan war is close

By Ben Farmer in Islamabad

and Sami Yousafzai in Doha

A PEACE accord to end America’s war

in Afghanistan is close to completion,

the Taliban has said, and a rough draft

is being proof read and translated

before being signed off.

Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Trump’s

chief negotiator, will leave officials to

complete the final details in Doha,

Qatar, and fly to Kabul to brief the

Afghan government. He was then ex-

pected to head to Brussels to brief Nato

allies before any deal was signed and

announced, sources familiar with the

negotiations said.

“We hope to have good news soon

for our Muslim, independence-seeking

nation,” said Suhail Shaheen, a spokes-

man for the Taliban’s political office in

Doha. Details of the accord will not be

announced until it is complete, but

sources briefed on the talks said it was

expected to see America withdraw

troops gradually over 15 months if secu-

rity conditions on the ground were met.

The Taliban will give guarantees Af-

ghan soil will not become a launch pad

for attacks by transnational terrorist

groups, and they will also begin talks

with Afghan leaders to discuss a wider

political settlement.

The talks have failed to agree on a

broad ceasefire, however, or whether

America will keep a permanent coun-

ter-terrorism force in the country to

continue targeting Islamic State of Iraq

and the Levant (Isil) and al-Qaeda.

The Taliban and US have spent more

than a year trying to reach a settlement,

meeting for nine rounds of talks.

Democrats set to form new

government with Five Star,

after League leader’s

election gamble backfires

China tells

police to crack

down at Hong

Kong border

By Sophia Yan and
Michael Zhang in Hong Kong

CHINA’S public security chief has
called on the country’s police officers
to guard its “southern gate” and be
ready to crack down on “violent and
terrorist activities” as anti-government
protests rage on in Hong Kong.
Forces must be vigilant against any-
thing that could “infiltrate, subvert, or
sabotage the country”, urged Zhang
Kezhi, the minister of public security,
on a visit this week to a police station in
the southern province of Guangdong,
which borders Hong Kong.
Officers must “firmly safeguard the
‘southern gate’ of our national political
security”, he said, alluding to the crisis
in Hong Kong without directly men-
tioning the demonstrations.
China has escalated its rhetoric as
the unrest continues, issuing ominous
warnings that paramilitary forces in a
city next to Hong Kong are ready to de-
ploy to suppress the protests. Doing so,
however, would be reminiscent of the
Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989,
when the Chinese military opened fire
on peaceful student demonstrators.
Mr Zhang’s comments come as Car-
rie Lam, the Hong Kong chief execu-
tive, refused to rule out the possibility
of invoking emergency powers, saying
she would look at all legal means to
“stop violence and chaos” in the semi-
autonomous Chinese territory.
The ordinance provides for the city’s
leader to assume near-absolute author-
ity to “make any regulations whatso-
ever which he [or she] may consider
desirable in the public interest”.
It would not need approval from city
politicians and would grant Ms Lam
sweeping powers. These would in-
clude: censorship and suppression of
publications and communications; ar-
rests, detentions and deportations;
control over ports and all transport; the
appropriation of property; and author-
ising the entry and search of premises,
with life imprisonment as the maxi-
mum penalty.
Mass protests kicked off in early
June against a now-suspended extradi-
tion bill that would have sent suspects
to face trial in mainland China. But pro-
testers continue to demand its formal
withdrawal to prevent the proposal
from being passed quickly.

2023

The new coalition could last until the

end of the legislature in four years’ time,

locking Matteo Salvini out of government

World news

Unearthed The bodies of 227 children killed 600 years

ago have been found in a mass grave in Peru, in what

experts say is the largest discovery of sacrificed children.

LUIS PUELL/AFP/GETTY

Lebanese army

targets Israeli

drones after

Beirut attack

By Josie Ensor in Beirut

THE Lebanese army opened fire on Is-

raeli surveillance drones over southern

Lebanon last night, raising the stakes

in the conflict between the warring

neighbours.

The military, which does not possess

air defence systems, fired shots from

M16 assault rifles at low-flying Israeli

drones over the village of al-Adaisseh,

near their shared border.

Israel regularly flies unmanned sur-

veillance planes into Lebanese air-

space, but it is rare for the Lebanese

army to attempt to shoot them down.

It appeared to be following through

on a promise to protect its sovereignty

after an Israel drone strike on Hizbollah

territory in Beirut over the weekend.

Michel Aoun, Lebanon’s president,

whose Christian Free Patriotic Move-

ment party is allied with Hizbollah, on

Tuesday stressed its right to defend the

country “by any means”.

Hizbollah had warned yesterday that

it was preparing its own “calculated

strike” against Israel in retaliation for

its raid on a Hizbollah position near the

Syrian city of Damascus on Saturday

that left two fighters dead and a drone

attack in southern Beirut hours later

that reportedly damaged missile-mak-

ing equipment.

“We want the strike to be a surprise

... and so there is no interest in diving

into the details,” said Sheikh Naim Qas-

sem, the Lebanese Shia group’s deputy

leader. “The coming days will reveal

this.”

Sources familiar with decision-mak-

ing in the militia told The Daily Tele-

graph that it would likely send a drone

into Israel in a like-for-like response

and that it would attempt to target Is-

raeli soldiers on patrol near the border

to “avenge” the killing of its men.

It was reported in Israeli media that

the drone strike targeted and success-

fully destroyed machinery used for the

production of precision-guided mis-

siles in the southern Beirut suburb of

Dahiyeh. Israel has been trying to dis-

rupt the flow of weapons and technol-

ogy from arch-rival Iran to the Islamic

republic’s proxies in Syria and Leba-

non. It has carried out hundreds of

strikes against Hizbollah and Iranian

forces’ positions in Syria, which have

so far been met with little response.

Tomato pasting A reveller covered in tomato pulp takes part in the annual Tomatina festival in the eastern Spanish town

of Bunol. The event, billed as ‘the world’s biggest food fight’, is popular with visitors from Britain, Japan and the US.

JAIME REINA/AFP/GETTY

14 ***^ Thursday 29 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph

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