The Pasta Putsch

Prince Junio Valeric Borghese, 64, boasts impeccable aristocratic credentials. He is scion of a 600-year-old noble Siena family that has produced a Pope (Paul V), and a flock of cardinals. He, wears Italy's Gold Medal for Military Valor for leading World War II assaults on Gibraltar and Alexandria harbors as a naval commander.

Since Alexandria, however, Prince Borghese has not acted very nobly. He remained a fascist loyal to the ousted Mussolini. At war's end he was imprisoned for hanging partisans, but was granted amnesty after only three years. Flabby and bulb-nosed, the "Black Prince," as Italians refer to him, was kicked out of the neo-Fascist Parliamentary Party for extremism. Three months ago, he told a newsman that "the state is so rotten it will not even be necessary to give it a small push." Last week a warrant was out for Borghese's arrest on grounds that he had tried to push.

His colpo di stato, as Italians refer to a coup d'etat, had been scheduled for Dec. 8. That night nearly a thousand of his followers assembled near the Interior Ministry, nerve center of Italy's police and government communications network. They never received the go-ahead. Instead, Borghese was mysteriously warned that his ultra-rightist National Front had long since been infiltrated and the plot was known. Reluctantly Borghese agreed to cancel the coup. By way of consolation, he treated his commanders to a late spaghetti supper.

The matter would probably have ended quietly if it had not become entangled in Italy's politics. Since January, in an effort to present itself as a respectable outfit and become part of the governing process, Italy's Communist Party has mounted a vigorous anti-Fascist campaign.

The strategy got a cold eye from Christian Democratic Premier Emilio Colombo, who has pledged that Communists will never enter his government despite the fact that the party attracts 27% of the Italian vote.

Through what now appears to have been a deliberate government leak, the pro-Communist newspaper Paese Sera two weeks ago learned of the Dec. 8 farce. PLOT BY THE EXTREME RIGHT, headlined the daily. But Colombo's government rather than the Communists emerged as the spearhead of anti-Fascist vigilance. That was the feeling after warrants were issued last week for the arrest of Prince Borghese and five aides for seeking "to provoke an armed insurrection."

Through a letter to his lawyers the Black Prince, who claims to be a poor farmer though he owns a 365-room castle and a 5,000-acre estate, blasted the affair as a "fabrication." His men were merely planning demonstrations against the upcoming visit of Yugoslav President Tito, he said, and anyone who insisted otherwise would be sued.

Tito's trip was originally canceled to show Yugoslav displeasure over Italian statements on Trieste; Italy handed over areas around that city as part of a 1954 mediation but Italian politicians still hedge about renouncing all claims. Mollified by an agreement that Trieste would not be mentioned during his five-day visit to Rome, Turin and the Vatican, Tito rescheduled the trip for last week. Small, polite, curious crowds turned out. The Black Prince, however, was not on hand to meet him.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.