Craxi Working Hard to Save Coalition : Test May Come Thursday in Parliament Debate on Ship Affair

Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi worked urgently Tuesday to hold his fragile governing coalition together in the face of a threat to bring him down over his handling of the Achille Lauro hijacking.

Craxi and Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti are under heavy fire from Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini, a member of the small but influential Republican Party, for seeking help in the hijack crisis from the Palestine Liberation Organization and for letting a reputed Palestinian terrorist flee Rome even though the United States had wanted him arrested.

The leaders of Spadolini’s party met throughout the day Tuesday, reportedly debating whether the outraged defense minister, himself a former prime minister, should resign from the Cabinet. Such a move would trigger a parliamentary crisis that would probably lead to the collapse of Craxi’s five-party coalition government, which has been one of the most stable in modern Italian political history.

Key Parliament Session

With Parliament scheduled to meet Thursday to debate the affair and perhaps undertake a critical vote of confidence, behind-the-scenes moves to mend the rift in the coalition took on a sense of urgency.

The two top leaders of Andreotti’s dominant Christian Democratic Party met with the defense minister in an attempt to placate him, and the Socialist prime minister sent Spadolini a conciliatory plea to talk things over.

Spadolini reportedly replied that he would meet with Craxi, but that he remained unconvinced by the prime minister’s explanation of the crisis. Craxi had told an inner Cabinet meeting Monday night, boycotted by Spadolini, that Italy had to let Abul Abbas, a leader of a splinter group of the PLO called the Palestine Liberation Front, leave the country, despite an American request for his arrest. Abbas had diplomatic immunity, and the United States did not made a strong enough legal case for holding him, Craxi said.

Implicated in Tapes

The influential Turin daily La Stampa reported that tape recordings of Abbas’ radio conversations with the hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, implicating him in the piracy, were sent by Washington as convincing proof to warrant his arrest--but they arrived in Rome 30 minutes after the Palestinian leader was put aboard a Yugoslav airliner Saturday night for Belgrade.

Even then, La Stampa said, Italian intelligence officials did not inform Craxi of the arrival of the tapes until Monday evening.

Attempts to smooth over the diplomatic crisis with the United States that erupted after Abbas’ flight also continued Tuesday.

Andreotti, attending a meeting of foreign ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries in Brussels, met briefly with U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz to defend the Craxi government’s moves. Shultz scolded the Italian foreign minister, saying he found the release of Abbas “incomprehensible.”

Meanwhile, the four hijackers of the Achille Lauro were shifted to a maximum-security prison in Spoleto, the medieval town in the Umbrian hills north of Rome where the annual arts festival is held. They had been held temporarily in a Sicilian jail, described by a police official as “porous as a colander,” since the Egyptian passenger jet that was carrying them to sanctuary was diverted to Sicily early Friday by U.S. Navy jets.

The Spoleto prison is new, built to house hard-case felons, including several Red Brigades terrorists who plagued Italy in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Arrest Warrants Issued

In Genoa, where the terrorists boarded the Achille Lauro, prosecutors issued arrest warrants for two more Palestinians, bringing to seven the number charged in the plot to seize the ship.

In addition to the four who have been identified by passengers as the men who hijacked the liner, a fifth man was picked up carrying false passports before the Achille Lauro sailed. The sixth allegedly sailed on the ship but inexplicably got off in Alexandria, Egypt, shortly before the hijacking, and the seventh was said to have booked passage for the others.

Italian investigators have gone aboard the cruise ship, which is due to arrive in Genoa today, in order to interrogate the crewmen.

Another investigator flew to Damascus, Syria, where an autopsy was being done on the body of an elderly man that washed up Monday on the beach at Tartus. In Damascus, a Western diplomat said the body is believed to be that of Leon Klinghoffer, 69, the wheelchair-bound American who reportedly was killed and dropped into the sea while the ship was anchored off Tartus a week ago.

Identifying Process Slow

John Burgess, the acting public affairs office at the U.S. Embassy in the Syrian capital, said that progress in identifying the body was slow and no conclusion is likely before today.

Police in Rome, meanwhile, defused an anti-aircraft missile they said had been aimed at the embassy of Tunisia. They said its firing failed when its gas-cylinder launcher blew up.

Tunisian Premier Mohammed Mzali arrived in Rome later in the day for a long-scheduled three days of talks with Italian officials and a meeting with Pope John Paul II.

In another incident, two men described as Arabs were picked up at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport carrying two suitcases filled with explosives, the police said. The men reportedly said the explosives were meant for use against Israelis and Americans, but not against Italians.