From Professor Richard Pankkhurst
Sir, Woodrow Wyatt's otherwise impressive article "Padania muddles through" (September 3) omits any reference to postwar Italy's signal failure to come to terms with its Fascist past. It is only this year, as a result of the tireless efforts of Professor Angelo Del Boca (a historian of Italian colonial Africa), that the Italian Ministry of Defence has finally admitted the fac, long well-known outside Italy, that the Italian Air Force employed poison gas during the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36.
Italy, it is worth of note, has still not restored to Ethiopia the historic Aksum obelisk, looted on Mussolini's personal orders in 1937, which, in accordance with Article 37 of the 1947 Italian Peace Treaty with the UN, should have been returned within 18 months.
Ethiopians are currently agitating for the long-overdue restitution of this ancient 24-metre-high stele. The Ethiopian Federal Parliament and the local Parliament of the Tigre administrative region have this year both demanded its return, and 13,000 citizens of Aksum recently signed a petition supporting this request.
Yours sincerely,
RICHARD PANKHURST,
As from: Addis Ababa University
Institute of Ethiopian Studies.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
September 5.