MOVIES - Dec. 5, 1991

Zeffirelli Angers Arabs: The Arab League on Wednesday threatened to sue Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli over an interview in which he called Arabs “a very serious threat for all the civilized world.” “Sometimes I think we did the wrong thing in intervening in the Gulf War: We should have let them kill each other,” the 68-year-old Zeffirelli said in the interview published Monday in the Turin newspaper La Stampa. Zeffirelli later apologized for the comments, which came after customs officials at Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh airport seized a promotional film he made on Florence, Italy. Customs objected to shots of two art masterpieces that represent naked bodies. The Rome envoy of the Arab League said the interview insults both Arabs and Muslims.