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January 17, 1963

Diary Entry of Aminitore Fanfani for 17 January 1963 [Excerpt]

In the morning, Fanfani met with his advisers, and they agreed to accept the Jupiter-Polaris arrangement. He then met with Kennedy for a series of conversations on East-West issues and the developing countries. During their private meeting, Fanfani conveyed to Kennedy the conditions for the agreement—Polaris submarines would not be based in Italy, and Italy would be a participant in the MLF and a member of the NATO committee establishing it. As he noted in his diary, Fanfani asked that language referring to “bases in the Mediterranean” (“which could lead one to suppose they are in Italy”) be removed from the “minute of understanding” of the meeting. Kennedy accepted the stipulations, and a memorandum of their understanding was prepared.

June 10, 1960

Enrico Mattei, 'On the Decolonization of States and of the Economy'

This is the English translation of the translation, into Italian, of a French speech that Enrico Mattei (1906-1962) held in Tunisia in 1960 while negotiating an agreement in his function as the 1953 founder and director of Italy’s Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI)—a conglomerate that managed Italy’s energy needs and led Italy’s energy foreign policy, pleasing many citizens but displeasing some high-ranking officials.

Already in the 1950s Mattei openly supported independence movements, also French Algeria’s. Moreover, he was a sharp Western critic of the world’s dominant oil companies, British Petroleum (until 1954, Anglo-Iranian Oil Company), Royal Dutch Shell, and the five US firms Standard Oil Company of California, Gulf Oil, Texaco, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and Standard Oil Company of New York, who in various combinations enjoyed oil monopolies in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq. He talked of Anglo-Saxon oil imperialism and in the 1950s coined the moniker the “Seven Sisters”—after the seven Pleiades sisters of Greek mythology—for those companies, leaving out the Compagnie Française des Pétroles that formed part of Iran’s and Iraq’s consortium, too. Unable to break into these two consortia or into the Saudi one, he succeeded to circumvent the Iranian one, which had been midwifed by the US government a year after the 1953 CIA-led coup d’Etat against Prime Minister Muhammad Musaddiq, who in 1951 had nationalized Iran’s oil.

In 1957 Mattei and Iran’s monarch, Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-1980; r. 1941-1979), cut a deal whose profit terms—75-percent for Iran, 25-percent for ENI—undercut the Iranian consortium’s 50-50 terms. The US government did not oppose the deal, hoping it would buoy the shah’s popularity and hence stabilize a Cold War client bordering the Soviet Union. When in 1959 Mattei signed an oil deal with the Soviet Union, he again shocked the consortia and now also Washington: for dealing with the Soviets, and because they sold oil for less than the consortia. (This deal was a contributing factor to a price cut by the large US companies in July 1960, which angered oil producing countries and triggered the birth, in September, of the Organization of the Petroleum Producing Countries, or OPEC, a project discussed from 1959 by Arabs including the Saudi Abdallah al-Tariqi.) In 1958 and 1960, Mattei negotiated deals inter alia with two minor Arab oil producers, Morocco and Tunisia, respectively. Moreover, he entertained contacts with the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale. In 1962 he died in an airplane crash that in 1997 was ruled to have been caused by a bomb—perpetrators unknown.

July 12, 1981

Report 2: Delegation of the Chinese Communist Party, 3-12 July 1981: Second Meeting of the Two Delegations, Saturday 4 July at 9.00

Chiaromonte introduces domestic and international situation; Peng Chong asks about the meeting with the French Communists. Berlinguer makes a speech.

May 5, 1980

Annex 9: Conversation at the Peking Airport, 25 April 1980

Berlinguer explains that they cannot invite the French Socialist on behalf of the CCP as the French Communist might get offended. Hu Yaobang said that the CCP was not ready to normalize relations with the French Communists as they were not independent enough yet.

April 22, 1980

Annex 4/C: Last of Meeting of 22 April at 4:30pm: Hu Yaobang's Questions and Berlinguer's Answers

Hu Yaobang asks about PCI relations with USA; PCI relations with French Socialists; and Hu's proposal to use the PCI to send Mitterrand a message and an invitation to China.

May 17, 1983

MAE DAP Memo on INF

MAE DAP memo on resumption of negotiations on INF. Observations on Allied negotiating position regarding an intermediate solution. Discussion of the Soviet position (press conference by Foreign Minister Gromyko, statements by Secretary-General PCUS Andropov): The paper also discusses the issue of French and British national nuclear deterrents, deployment of Euro-missiles and Soviet SS-20, comments Allied countries and perspectives on the negotiations.

April 10, 1971

MAE Cable on French proposal for uranium enrichment

Note concerning uranium enrichment plant proposed by the French government.

April 10, 1971

MAE Cable on US-France cooperation for uranium enrichment

Note on CEA CEO A. Giraud visit to the US to explore chances of US-French cooperation in the realm of uranium enrichment.

July 2, 1970

Note by CNEN on Italian delegation's visit to France

Report by CNEN on the visit by CNEN personnel and industrial experts to CEA plants and French facilities for uranium-enrichment.

March 25, 1974

Letter from Albonetti to GA

Letter from CNEN's Achille Albonetti to Andreotti on nuclear-powered ship “Enrico Fermi” and prospective cooperation with France over nuclear-armed ships.

Pagination