Foreign Policy
In the international arena, he helped dissidents and Socialist Parties throughout the world organise and become independent. Notable recipients of his logistical help were the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) during Francisco Franco's dictatorship, and dramatist Jiři Pelikan, in the then Czechoslovakia. A rare footage of Craxi trying to lay flowers at the tomb of Salvador Allende has been unearthed from RAI's (Radiotelevisione Italiana) archives. There is also proof that part of Craxi's illegally earned money was given in secret to leftist political opposition in Uruguay during the military dictatorship, to Solidarity in the period of Jaruzelski rule in Poland, and to Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization because of Craxi's sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
According to Giulio Andreotti (the 42nd Prime Minister of Italy) and Abdel Rahman Shalgham (Libya's Foreign Minister from 2000 until 2009), Craxi was the person who phoned Muammar al-Gaddafi to warn him of the impending Operation El Dorado Canyon air-strikes against Libya on 15 April 1986, permitting Gaddafi and his family to evacuate their residence in the Bab al-Azizia compound moments before the bombs dropped. He later played a role in the 1987 seizure of power in Tunisia by Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.
Read more about this topic: Bettino Craxi
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