'Kiss of honour' between Andreotti and Mafia head never happened, say judges

The infamous "kiss of honour" allegedly exchanged by Giulio Andreotti, the grand old man of Italian politics, and the Mafia capo di capi, Toto Riina, never happened, a report by Sicilian judges said yesterday.

But although Mr Andreotti's acquittal on charges of conspiring with the Mafia was upheld by appeal judges in Palermo, they said for many years Mr Andreotti had enjoyed "authentic, stable and amicable" relations with Mafiosi.

The justifications published by the judges yesterday, more than 1,500 pages in six volumes, explains why prosecutors appealed Mr Andreotti's original acquittal. The judges said: "He fully understood that his Sicilian associates had amicable relations with Mafia bosses, and he cultivated, therefore, amicable relations with the same bosses ... he asked them favours and he met them." The judges lend authority to the widespread belief that when Mr Andreotti became prime minister in 1972, helped by a huge swing to his Christian Democratic party in Sicily, it was achieved with the help of Mafia friends of his key Sicilian ally, Salvatore Lima, a former mayor of Palermo. Twenty years later, after relations between Mr Andreotti and his party and the Mafia had soured, Lima was murdered.

The judges decided to uphold Mr Andreotti's original acquittal because he had severed relations with the Mafia from 1980 when the president of the Christian Democratic party in Sicily, Piersanti Mattarella, was murdered after launching a movement to reform the Sicilian administration. The kiss by which Mr Andreotti was supposed to have sanctified his Mafia relationship with the Mafia was a fiction, they decided.