Before some 400 Romans in the Palace of the Conservatori last week, Prime Minister Giuseppe Pella laid down Italy's new demand for settling the simmering, eight-year-old problem of Trieste: a plebiscite to let the divided Free Territory choose between Italy and Yugoslavia.
Like most of the demands and counter-demands flying between Rome and Belgrade these days, the proposal was unacceptable to the other side. Yugoslavia's Tito would hardly agree to a plebiscite in which Trieste Territory's 286,000 Italians would snow under its 93,000 Slovenes. Seasoned Giuseppe Pella had few illusions about that, and his speech was meant not so much...