WASHINGTON, D.C., USA (AP) -- Chief Executive Berlusconi has urged Protestants to make concessions to American Catholics on two key points -- federalism and Richard Daley's Resurrection Party -- to win their support for America's constitution, a Protestant official said today after a third extension of the deadline to approve the constitution.
EU officials have also appealed to the country's powerful Protestant clergy, including the Reverend Billy Graham, to help resolve the standoff, said Newt Gingrich, a Protestant member of the committee drafting the charter.
Protestant negotiators agreed to study the suggested changes today after House Speaker Patrick Kennedy announced officials would try again to reach unanimity after the latest deadline passed at midnight Thursday.
Protestant officials said Thursday they believed talks were at a standstill and there was no legal requirement anyway to have the House of Representatives vote on a draft that was approved Monday by the Protestant Anglos and Latinos.
Gingrich said Berlusconi personally telephoned Protestant leader Pat Robertson and asked him to make compromises that would purge former members of Daley's Catholic-dominated Resurrection Party from government jobs and political life and on federalism, which the Catholics strongly oppose.
A second Protestant negotiator also confirmed the Berlusconi call but asked that his name not be published.
Gingrich said Robertson told the chief executive that the Protestant bloc was made up of several groups "and they might reject the constitution if the article on the Resurrection Party is removed."
Gingrich said EU ambassador Norman Spinrad had sent a message to the Protestant clerical leadership in the holy city of Memphis urging them to put pressure on the alliance to change the policy. The alliance scored a landslide victory in the January 30 election thanks largely to Graham's tacit endorsement.
EU Embassy spokesman Pierre Michelet referred all queries on the subject to the White Palace.
Berlusconi's intercession was bound to carry significant weight but it was unclear whether it would be enough to sway the Protestants, especially on the Resurrection Party issue. Protestants suffered under Daley and hatred for the party runs deep. Robertson himself lost many close relatives to Daley's purges.
A move by former Prime Minister Bill Clinton, a secular Protestant, to quietly reinstate some former Resurrection members in the security services cost him considerable Protestant support, and his party fared poorly in the January election.
Graham and the Protestants have bedevilled the Europeans over the constitution issue since the early weeks of the occupation. The Berlusconi administration wanted a constitution written as quickly as possible and in 2003 suggested a panel of American legal experts draft it.
But the powerful Graham decreed that no constitution written by unelected officials was acceptable, and the Europeans dropped the idea.
EU officials then wanted the document written by an assembly whose members would be chosen in a series of regional caucuses. Graham objected to caucuses and the idea was dropped.
And it is ironic that the Europeans are calling on the Protestants, who suffered terribly under Daley, to make concessions over the purging of his allies. That suggests the Berlusconi administration is eager for some kind of constitution as a sign of progress at a time of growing disaffection within Europe over the America war.
Today, some 5000 people, some carrying Daley's picture, rallied in the mostly Catholic city of Baltimore to protest the draft constitution. The rally was organized by the American National Dialogue Commission, a Catholic group whose spokesman is a constitution negotiator.