Press sources tell us that the hypothesis of the exchange of prisoners is becoming more and more real for the marines. A silent negotiation developed to close the affair through a direct link between Palazzo Chigi and the office of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
Italy could, in fact, in exchange for Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, deliver 18 Indian sailors arrested in the act of crime aboard a ship loaded with 40 tons of narcotics sailing in Italian territorial waters to Delhi.
Internationalization is therefore abandoned through arbitration, even if it is hounded by the Ministers responsible for managing the affair as "technically" ready, to give space to a secret bilateral diplomacy that, however, a diplomat has nothing if the negotiation is developed for an exchange of prisoners according to a bilateral agreement signed between India and Italy in August of 2012.
A path that would help Modi to get out of an impasse and gain credibility in the international arena, but which at the same time and once again would represent a false victory for Italy.
A "Pyrrhic victory" after that tragic 22 March 2013 when the two Navy Riflemen were returned to India and at the time that the State would solve the problem to accept pragmatic solutions that would certainly not be honorable for all our Armed Forces when two Italian soldiers would be considered at the same level as 18 drug dealers held in flagrante of offense aboard a ship loaded with 40 tons of drugs in navigation in Italian territorial waters.
Rome continues to try not to jeopardize Indian susceptibility after India has, on the other hand, outraged our sovereignty by misappropriating the right to trial on two of our soldiers without even producing circumstantial evidence of charges and after having prevailed their human rights with the restriction of personal freedom. A shyness that Italian difficult to understand especially in these months when the prime minister is also president of the European Union and considering the recent appointment of our foreign minister in charge of European foreign policy.
Ways, however, despite the optimistic expectations Italian is showing the world that India is absolutely not willing to surrender sovereignty. In fact, he assigned the case of the two Navy Riflemen to the national security advisor, former head of the Indian intelligence services, Rajiv Doval, not even our soldiers were terrorists who attempted the security of Delhi.
Exchanging their own soldiers in charge of carrying out an institutional task assigned to them by the national parliament with common criminals is certainly not a diplomatic success, but rather a compromise that we cannot be proud of. A demonstration that Rome prefers shortcuts by renouncing once again to assert its rights and demanding respect for them by a third state, on the basis of law and international conventions. A facade victory that will certainly be announced with bombastic declarations, but that of disavowed what at the institutional level has been repeatedly guaranteed to the Italians and to the two Navy Fusiliers: they will return to Italy with their heads held high! time I cannot ignore that we are once again faced with institutional choices that are difficult to share.
Even in this case, in fact, we would have renounced to assert our national dignity by resorting to an inconceivable barter that, moreover, offends the dignity of two Italian soldiers considered in the same way as common criminals of the worst kind, as drug traffickers!
Fernando Termentini
