(AGI) - Rome, 29th July - "I reject the accusations of the Council of Europe with indignation. They assert that acts of violence were perpetrated against Roma encampments without any effective protection from the forces of law and order, who for their part carried out raids on gypsy settlements. These are outright lies: the police have never committed any act of violence of this nature. Let us hear what facts are being referred to here". Thus Italy's Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, addressing the Lower House and replying to criticisms directed at him by the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe.

Let us hear what facts are being referred to here -- Maroni knows full well that whatever facts the Council of Europe presents will not be given the same play in Berluland as his accusations.

And so it goes on. It's become customary to read in the press that the Council of Europe is "a human rights watchdog", ie just another of those activist thingies and not a 47-nation multilateral treaty organisation. Now we have the Interior Minister of a major EU member state (and a founder member of the Council of Europe!) smearing the Council with swiftboat accusations of deliberate lies.

I hope Maroni and Italy pay for those words. Forlorn hope. The long process, operated by power-hungry cynics and neofascists, of undermining the determined postwar consensus in favour of rights and the rule of law, continues.