Eurofile: Fascists revive claims to Dalmatia

THERE are fears that Italy may try to reopen its claims on territory in the former Yugoslavia under pressure from neo-Fascist members of the new government. The new Foreign Minister, Antonio Martino, has been warned off reviving the border question by Croatia and Slovenia when he meets the US Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, in Washington today.

Members of the neo-Fascist-led National Alliance, a member of the governing right-wing coalition, have revived old claims on the border around Trieste, as well as parts of the Dalmatian coast. The neo-Fascists maintain that the 1975 Treaty of Osimo, which settled these, was null and void since one of the two signatories - Yugoslavia - no longer exists.

'IT IS always quiet in the middle of a typhoon,' a currency dealer commented yesterday during a respite in the attacks on the Greek drachma. Speculators launched an attack on the currency last week, expecting Greece, to devalue.

The popular Greek holiday island of Crete was also getting a shaking yesterday. An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the open-ended Richter scale sent thousands of panic-stricken people into the streets. The authorities said there were no victims but that buildings were damaged and cracks could be seen in homes on the northern part of the island. In the northwest, the roofs of two schools and the minaret of the town mosque were damaged.

The epicenter was located 180 miles south of Athens, off Crete's north coast. Crete is on an active faultline running from southern Albania through the Ionian Sea and west of the Peloponnese.

PORTUGAL yesterday sacked the head of its SIS intelligence services and the organisation's regional director in Madeira.

The SIS is understood to have targeted the Social Democratic Party of the Prime Minister, Anibal Cavaco Silva. It had also been snooping on the state prosecutor in Madeira. Late last month a microphone was discovered hidden under his floorboards, triggering an investigation. The prosecutor complained that the SIS had pried into his private life and into the affairs of other magistrates. It emerged that the SIS had been delving into the affairs of political parties, prostitution and the corruption of minors.

THE surge in support for extremist right-wing groups and rising levels of racist violence are the result of hardening policies on immigration and the increasing denial of rights to migrant communities, according to a report by the Institute of Race Relations to be published in early June.

Inside Racist Europe, the result of 18 months research on the increasingly bloody toll that racist violence is taking, says that the rise of extremist politics and violence are not the inevitable consequence of recession and unemployment as often portrayed in the media.

ETA, the Spanish terrorist organisation, has notified between 100 and 150 businessmen in Madrid that it wants them to contribute between 50 and 100 million pesetas to its coffers. The extortion notes were sent to people who are wealthy or very well known. Some 14 of them have complained to the police about the demands.

NATO allies are pouring vast quantities of arms into Greece and Turkey despite fears that increasing regional tensions in the south- east of Europe could provoke further problems. The Nato weaponry - mostly surplus battle tanks from Germany and the US - are being handed over to Greece and Turkey rather than scrapped, under the terms of the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, concluded to disarm the former Cold War adversaries and guarantee stability in Europe.

The new UN Arms Register reveals that Turkey received 1,017 battle tanks from Nato last year (almost outnumbering the entire British Army tank holdings of 1,025). In the same period Greece, received 725 tanks, about as many as the the Dutch Army has. Some question the wisdom of the arms transfers at a time of growing regional tension in the area.