Italian Leader, in U.S., Calls for Justice in Skiers’ Deaths

With a somber President Clinton at his side, Italy’s prime minister insisted Friday that whoever was responsible for the deaths last year of 20 skiers killed when a Marine Corps jet sliced a gondola cable in the Italian Alps must be punished.

The first meeting between Clinton and Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema, coming at a sensitive moment in U.S.-Italian relations, was colored by a military jury’s verdict a day earlier acquitting Capt. Richard Ashby of involuntary manslaughter charges in the tragedy.

Clinton told his guest: “We are profoundly regretful and apologetic for what has occurred.

“The United States is not trying to duck its responsibility” for the accident, the president said. “We are heartbroken and horrified by what happened.”

D’Alema, a former Communist who now leads a center-left coalition government, faces an outcry in Italy over the outcome of the trial.

“I was personally shocked, and so is Italian public opinion,” the prime minister said, adding: “I just wish to stress one point: That event certainly cannot be considered an ordinary occurrence. It is not normal for a military aircraft to fly in a valley 300 feet from the ground. . . . We expect that at the end of the process, it is made clear who was responsible for this accident and that these people are punished for it.”

While expressing his sorrow throughout a nearly 50-minute news conference, Clinton said he is limited in what he can say because at least two more judicial proceedings are scheduled in connection with the accident over the Cavalese Valley on Feb. 3, 1998.

Earlier, the two leaders were photographed at the start of a meeting in the Oval Office, but they skipped the customary handshake pose.

The question of compensation for the families of those killed--skiers from Germany, Belgium, Italy, Poland, Australia and the Netherlands--remains unsettled.

Clinton expressed a readiness to “do what is appropriate by the families.”

In a CNN interview, Ashby said he believes that the victims’ families should be compensated for their losses.

Clinton and D’Alema agreed that defense officials in each country will cooperate on a study of flight operations and safety measures.

In both countries, officials emphasized that the pilot’s acquittal must not be allowed to damage relations between the NATO allies.

The United States relies heavily on an air base in Aviano, Italy, and a naval base in Naples as staging areas for operations in the Balkans, the Middle East and the Mediterranean region.

In Italy, the tragedy was described by one columnist as “almost an act of war.”

“The Rambo-style behavior of the ‘top guns’ is not fate, and neither is the negligence of their commanding officers,” Ennio Caretto wrote in Friday’s editions of Corriere della Sera. “If Clinton wants good relations with Italy and the unconditional use of its military bases, he must recognize the country’s sovereignty and not treat it as a province of the empire.”

La Repubblica, reflecting the outrage expressed in a raft of Italian dailies, put the headline “The Impunity of the Powerful” atop an account of the verdict.

The 31-year-old Ashby, an eight-year veteran from Mission Viejo, Calif., faces another trial on a single charge of obstruction of justice stemming from allegations that he helped hide and then destroy a videotape his co-pilot made of the training flight of the EA-6B Prowler. The co-pilot, Capt. Joseph P. Schweitzer, faces a court-martial on the same charges of which Ashby was acquitted at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Ashby said that if he had the opportunity to meet with the victims’ families, some of whom attended his monthlong trial, “I’d just like to give them a hug.”

He said that he and his three crew mates wrote a letter of sympathy to the families one day after the accident but that the Marine Corps would not deliver it.

Even as Clinton sought to avoid saying anything that would have an impact on the remaining judicial proceedings, he sent strong signals of his dismay over the accident.

“The important thing now is that the United States must clearly and unambiguously shoulder the responsibility for what happened,” he said. “Our presence in Italy, our air operations, our training operations were the context, the environment in which this horrible thing occurred.”

The accident a year ago, and now the verdict, have revived questions in Italy about the extent to which its airspace should be used for the exacting maneuvers of military pilots, and even about the purpose of NATO, the post-World War II alliance developed to defend Western Europe against the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact nations.

Luigi Manconi, the leader of the Greens party in Italy, said the need for such an alliance is “completely gone or at least strongly weakened.”

In Washington, D’Alema went so far as to say that the rules of military exercises must be reconsidered. Clinton agreed with him.

What must be accomplished, however, is a reconciliation of the security mission with the “safety of our citizens,” D’Alema said.

Maria De Cristofaro of The Times’ Rome Bureau contributed to this report.