Italian Communist Party leader Achille Occhetto barely had time to savor his triumph. At a party congress in Rimini, he won a decisive vote to give the Communists a more moderate identity as the Democratic Party of the Left. Then came the pratfall: the newly named Democrats narrowly failed to re-elect him as party secretary.
Reformers deserted Occhetto when he refused to amend the leftists' hard-line demand that Italy pull its small contingent of naval and air forces out of the gulf war. Although humiliated, Occhetto won his job back late last week with a decisive 69% of the votes. But...
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